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";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"version";s:3:"2.0";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"channel";a:1:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
	
	
	
	




















































";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"WPTavern: Periodic Table of WordPress Plugins Showcases 108 Most Popular Plugins";s: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=144183";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"https://wptavern.com/periodic-table-of-wordpress-plugins-showcases-108-most-popular-plugins";s: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:2448:"<p>WordPress core committer Pascal Birchler has published a <a href="https://plugintable.com/">Periodic Table of WordPress Plugins</a> to celebrate the software&#8217;s upcoming 20th anniversary. The table showcases 108 of the most popular free plugins on WordPress.org.</p>



<p>Ten years ago Birchler created a website that showed the most popular plugins in a similar table layout, ranking them by number of active installations. This chart has been updated and is now available at <a href="https://plugintable.com/">plugintable.com</a>.</p>



<p>&#8220;Today, I am actually &#8216;re-introducing&#8217; this project, complete with a modernized look and feel, more curation, and more useful information than before,&#8221; Birchler said.</p>



<img />



<p>The website is interactive, so cards can be expanded to see more information about each plugin, including the author, install count, star rating, and the date it was first published.</p>



<img />



<p>Approximately 57% of the plugins included have 1 million or more installs, so it gives you a chance to see all of the most successful WordPress.org extensions at a glance. 600k is the lowest number of active installs for plugins included in the chart.</p>



<p>After making the chart, Birchler noted that he was impressed by the stats for the Really Simple SSL plugin, which has more than 5 million active installs and a 5/5-star rating. He also highlighted Site Kit by Google as being the youngest &#8220;element&#8221; first released in October 2019, with 3+ million active installs in just over three years in the directory. The XML Sitemaps Generator plugin is the oldest among those included, released in 2005 just before Akismet. </p>



<p>&#8220;Another plugin that has caught my eye is WP Multibyte Patch by <a href="https://twitter.com/eastcoder">@eastcoder</a>, which offers improvements for Japanese sites,&#8221; Birchler said. &#8220;With over 1+ million installs it makes me wonder why WordPress core itself doesn&#8217;t have better support for multibyte characters.&#8221;</p>



<p>If you like the Period Table of WordPress Plugins and want to see it hanging on your wall, Birchler has set up a <a href="https://shop.plugintable.com/">Shopify-powered store</a> where you can purchase a high-quality print version. The poster comes in light and dark modes and is also available framed. He plans to donate the proceeds of the store to the WordPress community.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Apr 2023 03:51:50 +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:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60:"WPTavern: Big Bite Launches 2023 Enterprise WordPress Survey";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=144179";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://wptavern.com/big-bite-launches-2023-enterprise-wordpress-survey";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2495:"<p>Big Bite, a UK-based enterprise WordPress agency, has launched a new survey called <a href="https://bigbite.net/state-of-enterprise-WordPress/">State of Enterprise WordPress</a> to gather data and insights on how the platform can best serve large-scale brands.</p>



<p>The survey takes approximately 5-7 minutes to complete and covers budgets,<br />publishing processes, platform strengths, user frustrations, custom functionality, infrastructure, architecture, and ongoing maintenance. It also attempts to gauge whether enterprise users have embraced the block editor and what other CMS&#8217;s the organization is using in addition to WordPress.</p>



<p>&#8220;This particular survey is focused on brands that are using WordPress, in any part of their estate,&#8221; Big Bite CEO Iain McPherson said. &#8220;Maybe it could be a small blog, powering an intranet or a large publishing site. I want to understand why and how they are using WordPress, but then drill down into other valuable metrics such as team size and budgets.&#8221;</p>



<p>The survey will be used to create a new report that summarizes the findings from enterprise organizations. McPherson said if the report is well received in the WordPress community, his team may continue publishing the State of Enterprise WordPress on an annual basis.</p>



<p>The survey most directly applies to the people who are responsible for the enterprise organization&#8217;s website, as opposed to the business owners. </p>



<p>&#8220;We find with companies of these sizes; multiple people are managing their WordPress products,&#8221; McPherson said. &#8220;Also, multiple respondents from the same company is totally OK, too.</p>



<p>&#8220;This is one of a couple of initiatives I am working on to raise the brand awareness of Big Bite, but more importantly, show that WordPress should be considered as an enterprise CMS.&#8221;</p>



<p>According to W3Techs, WordPress&#8217; current CMS market share is at <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress">63.3%</a> of all the websites where a CMS can be detected. Enterprise organizations help keep this market growing, so insights about how they are using WordPress and their particular pain points could be helpful in developing solutions that benefit this segment. Data from the <a href="https://bigbite.net/state-of-enterprise-wordpress/">survey</a> will be aggregated and anonymized and will not be attributed to the respondent or the organization.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Apr 2023 00:36:03 +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: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:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Do The Woo Community: BobWP Talks About WPSpeakers.com on 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=74976";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"https://dothewoo.io/wpspeakers-com-on-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:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:414:"<p>Recently Michelle Freschette launched WPSpeakers.com. A site where you can list yourself as a speaker or find someone of your event.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/wpspeakers-com-on-the-friday-show/">BobWP Talks About WPSpeakers.com on 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, 28 Apr 2023 10:35:35 +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: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:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"WPTavern: Human Made to Host AI for WordPress Event on May 25, 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=144137";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"https://wptavern.com/human-made-to-host-ai-for-wordpress-event-may-25-2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2587:"<p>Human Made is organizing the community&#8217;s first ever <a href="https://hello.humanmade.com/word-on-the-future-ai-for-wordpress">AI for WordPress</a> online conference on May 25, 2023. The time and schedule have not yet been announced but registration is open.</p>



<p>Attendees can expect to see demos of Human Made&#8217;s current AI projects and highlights of what others are doing in the space. The organizers plan to discuss the impact AI will have on the WordPress industry and share predictions and insights.</p>



<p>Human Made is among a few WordPress product makers that have been <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-developers-are-experimenting-with-gutenberg-native-ai-block-and-content-assistants">experimenting with Gutenberg-native AI block and content assistants</a>. CTO Joe Hoyle published several videos demonstrating how prompts can work across various blocks with AI natively integrated into the block editor. His prototypes have <a href="https://humanmade.com/2023/04/17/progress-on-generative-content-and-blocks-wordpress-ai-pt-2/">progressed</a> with the addition of Content Streaming that renders content, blocks, and layout in real time. Users can also cancel the streaming output while it&#8217;s in progress to refine the guidance given to the AI.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">We've made some progress on the WordPress Gutenberg AI integration. Specifically: Content Streaming&#8211; blocks are now rendered as they come in to provide more immediate feedback and guidance. <a href="https://t.co/D8lw5lBIun">pic.twitter.com/D8lw5lBIun</a></p>&mdash; Joe Hoyle (@joe_hoyle) <a href="https://twitter.com/joe_hoyle/status/1647880352327774210?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>The agency has gone all in on exploring the possibilities AI opens up for this industry and has created a guide titled &#8220;<a href="https://hello.humanmade.com/76-ways-ai-could-transform-wordpress">76 ways AI could transform WordPress</a>.&#8221; The document covers content, marketing, publishing, engineering, delivery, and impact in the enterprise. </p>



<p>The virtual AI for WordPress event will feature industry leaders who are also creating things in this space. WPfront.page is <a href="https://wpfront.page/list/ai-plugins/">tracking</a> more than three dozen AI products that have popped up in the last few months, so there is no shortage of developers experimenting. Organizers will announce more speakers and sessions ahead of the event on May 25.</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, 28 Apr 2023 04:25:01 +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: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:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:127:"Post Status: Talking With Valet’s Ceo Kimberly Lipari About The Changing Value Of Websites To Organizations-Post Status Draft";s: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=149139";s: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:135:"https://poststatus.com/talking-with-valets-ceo-kimberly-lipari-about-the-changing-value-of-websites-to-organizations-post-status-draft/";s: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:60280:"<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">In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/kimberlylipari?lang=en">Kimberly Lipari</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller </a>discuss the ups and downs of building and selling WordPress companies. They share their experiences, including the challenges they faced and lessons learned. They also give advice to entrepreneurs and business owners looking to grow and sell their own WordPress companies. </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"> 30</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 class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><a href="https://twitter.com/kimberlylipari?lang=en">Kim Lipari</a>, owner and CEO of <a href="https://twitter.com/thewpvalet">Valet</a>, talks with <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> about their insights and experiences on entrepreneurship, including how to handle challenges, the importance of building relationships, and the role of vulnerability in leadership. They offer advice on building a successful WordPress business and emphasize the need for continuous learning and personal growth. Overall, this episode provides valuable insights and advice for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and building a successful WordPress-based business.</p>



<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>



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

</div>



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-4">
<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<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">Pagely</a></h3>



<p>Top-Tier Managed WordPress hosting solutions for <strong>Enterprise</strong>, the<strong> Public Sector</strong>, and <strong>Media</strong> companies. We invented Managed WordPress and we never stopped raising the bar. Expect Extraordinary</p>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow">
<img width="752" height="257" src="https://poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pagely-Logo-Dark-800px_Web-752x257.png" alt="" class="wp-image-149144" />
</div>
</div>



<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://valet.io/">Valet</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/wpbuilds">Nathan Wrigley</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/">Beaver Builder</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/jenniferbourn?lang=en">Jennifer Bourn</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/chrislema">Chris Lema</a></li>



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



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



<li><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/en-ca">GoDaddy</a></li>



<li><a href="https://getflywheel.com/">Flywheel</a></li>



<li><a href="https://mediatemple.net/">Media Temple</a></li>



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



<li><a href="https://www.liquidweb.com/">Liquid Web</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/pippinsplugins?lang=en">Pippin Williamson</a></li>



<li><a href="https://restrictcontentpro.com/">Restrict Content Pro</a></li>



<li><a href="https://affiliatewp.com/">AffiliateWP</a></li>



<li><a href="https://sandhillsdev.com/">Sandhills Development</a></li>



<li><a href="https://easydigitaldownloads.com/">Easy Digital Downloads</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/">Gravity Forms</a></li>



<li><a href="https://ithemes.com/">iThemes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.liquidweb.com/">Liquid Web</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/twigpress?lang=en">Carl Alexander</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/linds_halsey?lang=en">Lindsay Halsey</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/nathaningram?lang=en">Nathan Ingram</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/rezzz">Jason Resnick</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/matt_medeiros?lang=en">Matt Medeiros</a></li>



<li><a href="https://hallwaychats.com/">Hallway Chats&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://trello.com/">Trello</a></li>



<li><a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a></li>



<li><a href="https://zoom.us/">Zoom</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot</a></li>



<li><a href="https://keap.com/">Infusionsoft</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.activecampaign.com/">ActiveCampaign</a></li>



<li><a href="http://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a></li>



<li><a href="http://www.agilecrm.com/">AgileCRM</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/kimberlylipari?lang=en">Kimberly Lipari </a>(Owner and CEO of <a href="https://twitter.com/thewpvalet">Valet</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><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] hey everybody. Welcome back to Post Status Draft. This is part of our agency series, and I&#8217;m talking to a longtime friend and an awesome agency owner in the space, Kimberly Lepar of Valet Fame.  </p>



<p>We&#8217;re gonna be talking about, um, The role in the changing value of websites to organizations. Um, Vale&#8217;s been around so long and has so much experience and just diving into that with Kimberly is gonna be really, really exciting for me because updating her knowledge for how websites and their role, uh, in the world and businesses and organizations, she&#8217;s got a front seat view to that with her team, what they do for their clients.  </p>



<p>And we&#8217;re gonna talk about, um, some of those elements that, um, an organization should. Outsource stick to their core competency and outsource. But before we get all of that, we&#8217;re gonna have a fun conversation talking about where websites sit today in the market, on the internet, their value and role, and no better person to talk about that than Kimberly.  </p>



<p>So Kimberly, would you mind sharing a little bit about [00:01:00] yourself and what you do at ballet?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me. It&#8217;s always a pleasure. I . Love hanging out and having conversations like this. I think they&#8217;re so important. Um, and I am the owner of valet.io. We offer comprehensive end-to-end website management services for businesses that wanna have a strong brand presence, um, want to make sure they&#8217;re communicating themselves well online and need a team to support them so that they can focus on the things that they do best every day.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Gosh, you&#8217;re awesome. I, I&#8217;m gonna come back to the end to end because I think that&#8217;s one of the compelling parts of this conversation too. All that you do health. And then having a, a firm, an agency, a partner really that can do so much for the website. Um, but Okay, let&#8217;s dive in. So we&#8217;ve been talking about this for a couple of months now, but I saw you posted on LinkedIn and I&#8217;ll put those in the show notes.  </p>



<p>That post, I think it was so timely and so [00:02:00] good. I&#8217;ve been kind of updating my view about all this. Mm-hmm. And you know, in the old days, Websites for these, like, and I find myself still referring to him like they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re a brochure at the base. Mm-hmm. A 24 7, 365 days, a, a year where your clients can go in and kind of check out what you do, but your post really illuminated something that&#8217;s all evolved and changed as the world has changed and business.  </p>



<p>And, um, what are you seeing there? Um, with the changing value and importance and focus on websites for business and organizations that you serve.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Well, I think namely the, the chief change is that Gone is the, uh, my business at webmaster email address, uh, that used to be, uh, the sole, uh, provider and contact point for what websites were for a lot of companies.  </p>



<p>Uh, they were kind of these closed off boxes where only, you know, two people could edit the HTML and, [00:03:00] and change things up. So, um, from that, And you say the olden days, which it feels like that, but I think maybe even just in the past, I don&#8217;t know, probably five, five years or so, it, it&#8217;s escalated very quickly to become, uh, that the website is important to the CEO, uh, for one reason or another, probably more for.  </p>



<p>Um, brand identity so that, you know, how are we putting our best space forward, right? These, uh, very broad, uh, strokes of what the business means. Uh, it&#8217;s important to marketing, uh, to make sure that they are communicating the services effectively, that there&#8217;s good copy, good, uh, interaction, uh, social integrations, right?  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s also important to, uh, sales managers and even, um, other line level employees. Um, and other parts of the business to be able to share what they&#8217;re doing or provide. PDFs, white papers, all kinds of registrations. I mean, all those [00:04:00] different things. So it&#8217;s become a very, uh, Uh, crowdsourced, um, important piece of, of a business.  </p>



<p>And so that&#8217;s changed a lot. It&#8217;s no longer one person kind of holding the keys that can understand. It&#8217;s now really commonplace for everybody in a business to, to think of the website in a different way with a different sort of use for the role that they play.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> One of the things that strikes me from what you&#8217;re saying in our discussions in the past, particularly with your, your clients and what you see is this, when you said webmaster, it&#8217;s this thought of a supplemental thing, like an a, almost an afterthought that websites were once mm-hmm.  </p>



<p>Thought of now to be in very integral to everything the business and organization does. Um, I remember talking with some of your, About some of your clients that you all work with and, and you, you had an interesting way to say it. You&#8217;re like, maybe they weren&#8217;t straight on e-commerce, so at Ithe or post status for [00:05:00] instance.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, that was, that was it like, yeah. If, if the website&#8217;s down we&#8217;re not making money, you know? Mm-hmm. But you&#8217;re seeing a multifaceted, uh, approach now where it&#8217;s not just an afterthought and supplemental, it&#8217;s really key to driving the mission and goals of the organization. And I thought that was really interesting and awesome for WordPress, by the way.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. And the internet that. Seeing that value change, I wonder if some of that got spur on with pandemic. You know, I&#8217;ve heard a lot of, let&#8217;s say a yo yoga studio or those in-person physical location, bricks and mortar businesses go, yeah, what do we do now? Well, I loved if there&#8217;s positives that came outta covid.  </p>



<p>It was the fact that it pushed people to go. That&#8217;s not our only means of business. But can you talk a little bit and share what you see from client perspective about the role of websites in these organizations?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I have two, um, two very specific examples. I think, uh, [00:06:00] from very different sides of the coin, um, that kind of point out some of the changes that we&#8217;re seeing.  </p>



<p>Um, working on a project with a client who, uh, is trying to consolidate, um, a few different brands, uh, under an umbrella into one, um, during the meetings throughout this project. We can hear the different. Stakeholders in the project, throughout the company, um, really communicating what&#8217;s important to them.  </p>



<p>And this kind of goes back to what each person in the web, in the business thinks the website should do. Right. Um, you know, the CEO is is much more concerned about. The, the layout, how things are presented. Uh, you have marketing and other, um, sub-departments of, of that worried about, well, it&#8217;s, is it flashy enough?  </p>



<p>You know, where&#8217;s the, where&#8217;s the pizazz? And then you have, um, someone else who. Has submitted copy and then it gets pulled a week later because no one [00:07:00] within the confines of the project had really taken the time to dig deep into what those words were. So that actually became kind of an afterthought, but then it bumped up in priority.  </p>



<p>So you have all of these different things that should matter. But there&#8217;s no, uh, kind of cohesive brain on, uh mm-hmm. When and where they matter, right. Uh, because this kind of traditional business roles, right? So I think even, even business itself is kind of catching up to how it feels about what its website is and what it does.  </p>



<p>Um, alternatively, um, outside of the web presence, businesses that traditionally take place, With more, uh, one-on-one, um, interactions. I have, um, a, a dear friend who I spoke with a couple weeks ago who works in oil field sales and they typically do their, their sales and marketing person to person, right?  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s go on a fishing charter, let&#8217;s go have lunch and all these things. And I. They are, they&#8217;re not leveraging their website well enough to actually say, Hey, we now do these four [00:08:00] other things, uh, that we haven&#8217;t, you know, we only tell people in, in person to person meetings, uh, and the CEO says, you know, oh, well, yeah, we have one.  </p>



<p>And that&#8217;s fine enough. But is is person to person, um, enough nowadays, are they gonna go to lunch with you and then go check out your website? Right? Do you offer a brochure of services, um, within that and explain what it is that you do? So, um, I think it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s such a widely used normal tool now to just go to someone&#8217;s url, um, that from, from online focused.  </p>



<p>Primary businesses and person to person, um, based, you know, formally traditional, right? Brick and mortar or service, service style companies, even in large industries, you know, million dollar year industries like oilfield. Um, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s changing. It has to. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, yeah. I think I lost the thread there a little, but&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> No.  </p>



<p>And why not? Why not [00:09:00] utilize this amazing technology, for instance? So, you know, you can use WordPress to build a website, but then the advent of Google and the search engines that push traffic, people are looking for destinations to find problem, you know, answers to their. Challenges. And so the advent of marketing and understanding with SEO and paid traffic and things like that, back to a site where you could convert it, measure it.  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Yeah. Even, yeah, even on the back end. And that was one of the things that I talked about, uh, with my friend. They don&#8217;t have a A A CRM of, of much of any kind. It just kind of lives in these guys&#8217; heads that go out to these travel routes. You know, we always live on this hit by a bus scenario mm-hmm. Of what happens if I get hit by a bus tomorrow?  </p>



<p>What is my team, you know, gonna do what have, what have I laid for information and documentation and. You know, formally, uh, businesses that have been person to person are, are missing an opportunity to kind of move into that digital age of, of finding [00:10:00] clients and putting them on a journey or, um, even, even if it&#8217;s just a, a consideration of the journey you wanna put people on outside of the web experience.  </p>



<p>Right? It&#8217;s all, it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a good. Um, what am I thinking of? Mind mapping? Mm-hmm. Um, I guess of, of how you want all that to work. So from, from the backend, from the actual interfacing with the customer to the front end to how the customer sees you. There&#8217;s a lot of that in between, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s now all being laid on the, on the website.  </p>



<p>This is the website&#8217;s job and that&#8217;s, there&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a lot. There&#8217;s a lot going on.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, you mentioned two, two kind of groups. It&#8217;s either marketing managers that I assume could have different title, but somebody that manages the marketing, seeing the value of websites for marketing their business. Uh, and then you also mentioned CEOs.  </p>



<p>So that to me just instantly says, Importance, like recognizing the importance that a website can do all these functions. Add [00:11:00] to not just supplement, supplement, but be very complimentary and strengthen cells. You know, if you&#8217;re in B2B cells, I have a friend, I think we, you and I have talked about as a manufacturing company, sells all over the world.  </p>



<p>Well, the search results for those are probably very small, but they&#8217;re long tail and very easily capturable. You know, like, yep. Um, they&#8217;re, somebody&#8217;s going online to find that part or that. Particular, you spell those compressors, but you know, and then so like you could grow your bottom line or your top line really easily, just with some simple things with a WordPress website.  </p>



<p>Absolutely. And then like you said, for those b2b, it&#8217;s, there&#8217;s so many things. Support is another bucket of things. I think of a website is like, I can&#8217;t remember who I&#8217;m supposed to call for this. Or I need to ask a question, go to the website right there. Mm-hmm.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Absolutely.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So I think that&#8217;s good. Very good.  </p>



<p>In terms of the industry, in terms of the [00:12:00] internet, of course, we love the open web post status and you did too of la um, through WordPress. So that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s good seeing that value, knowing it has such utility for the overall growth and seeing the mm-hmm. Importance of that. And then, um, but this is interesting.  </p>



<p>So are you seeing, uh, from the role perspective, they&#8217;ve now seen it. Now you have a different people coming in with different. Needs and wants for their website. And is there someone unifying that from the client perspective or is it a lot of different stakeholders coming, going, well, we need this. Okay.  </p>



<p>Is there somebody synthesizing all of that?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> We play that role where we can, uh, where, where we have been allowed to. I think we st oftentimes we&#8217;ll get very lucky and we&#8217;ll have a C-level, um, stakeholder involved that can do, uh, the, I think of as like a Venn diagram where you have linear thinkers and strategic [00:13:00] thinkers.  </p>



<p>And that overlapping section is someone who can live in both worlds or at least empathize very well, uh, with one or the other. So, Um, we play that role as often as we can, uh, and we try to move people into a space where they realize that is possible. Uh, two things can be true. Uh, you can want to have a very grand strategic, um, uh, presence, you know, with, with wonderful colors and layout and good copy, but at the same time, There&#8217;s some technical decisions that need to be made.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, and some research that needs to be done kind of in between. So overlapping, uh, you&#8217;ll see, um, there are specific roles. Marketing managers I find are kind of expanding into that. Um, and they&#8217;re sourcing companies like us to handle the technical depth, um, and to help us translate that, that gray area, um, where you have strategy.  </p>



<p>Kind of overlapping with this linear direction of where people wanna go. [00:14:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So oftentimes it&#8217;s the CEO marketing manager type that is your point person. But then are there other teams or are they funneling through that person, or are they coming straight to valet, for instance, on those?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Oh, they&#8217;ll come straight to us.  </p>



<p>They&#8217;ll come straight to us. We work with a lot of different people within, uh, within the. The org chart. Um, but really the kind of, you have to be in a position. Where you are looking at the forest and the trees. Mm-hmm. Um, to be able to kind of drive direction or, um, get the most value out of the advice in the consultation, you know, that, that an agency like our can offer.  </p>



<p>Because we can&#8217;t come across too, um, too bossy, right? You&#8217;re using the wrong thing. Why would you tell me that? I researched and it&#8217;s fine. No, I&#8217;m not saying it because you&#8217;re wrong. I&#8217;m saying because, you know, we, we have experience. We can give you a better option. So, um, you know, it&#8217;s, and we can see the [00:15:00] forest, you know, we know what else is going on.  </p>



<p>I know you really wanna use this one tool, but you have this other one over here that you&#8217;re not aware of that someone else installed. Um, you know, and those won&#8217;t work together. So, you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s. We work really well with roles that kind of have essentially the same purview in their job that we have in ours as tech advisors.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Uh, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s so interesting cuz you mentioned kind of in the, first of all this, the role of the webmaster. That&#8217;s, and you know, in the early days it was maybe find somebody that can cobble this stuff together. Uh, but that changing role where they see the importance and then go, but they still need someone with expertise that can advise them, should I, I can go left or right, which way should I go?  </p>



<p>Yeah. And it seems like which the role you&#8217;re, you all are providing too is offer, there&#8217;s a couple of paths here and maybe steer them to one particular path.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, that&#8217;s a lot of what it is, is what&#8217;s the best path for you? [00:16:00] You know, it, you may be, uh, if there&#8217;s these three or four very important things, which one would benefit you the most?  </p>



<p>You know, let&#8217;s go there first and then we can go back to the three or four important things. That&#8217;s, there&#8217;s no static list of what&#8217;s best. Mm-hmm. I mean, there&#8217;s a static list of, um, what&#8217;s good. But what&#8217;s best? I mean, that depends. What do you, what do you need? Are you interested in growth? Are you interested in converting, are you interested in education?  </p>



<p>You know, those are all very different, very different things.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> And you said too, like depth. So there&#8217;s someone here at the organization has these strategic goals, things they want to do, um, but the depth part, and that&#8217;s where, you know, Online work is pretty deep. It&#8217;s so nuanced. There&#8217;s so much stuff going on.  </p>



<p>Right. In your post, you mentioned, you know, performing well in the search engine, the SEARCHs, the search engine results, um, speed. Mm-hmm. All those kind of things they probably don&#8217;t think about. And the work I&#8217;ve done or helped [00:17:00] with, um, Lindsey&#8217;s, my wife&#8217;s Lindsey that you know real well. Um, what&#8217;s her marketing agency is love her.  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s about it. They understand strategic strategy, that what they need to do and what they need to get accomplished, but don&#8217;t always have that level of depth in-house. Mm-hmm. And we were talking before we got started on the recording here, about kind of the changing roles of like, the importance of having vendors out here.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. That. You know, to hire someone with this type of expertise is probably gonna be pretty hard. Uh, at almost any level. There&#8217;s obviously enterprise, you know, companies that have whole teams that do web stuff. But still probably, I think, and I&#8217;ve seen from our membership at Post Status still outsource a lot of the depth we&#8217;re talking about because yes, it&#8217;s hard to hire a WordPress professional that knows all these things and run this gamut.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. And we were talking specifically about this role. Um, my view is, [00:18:00] When I was helping a client a couple years ago, uh, they&#8217;d often referred to me, I was doing consulting with him as a vendor, and I&#8217;d go, but. But I feel more, I care about the mission and goals of what you&#8217;re trying to get accomplished.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. And I don&#8217;t think of myself as just someone that comes in, slots in, doesn&#8217;t work, comes back out leaves. Yep. Uh, I might have multiple clients and stuff, and I think that has to shift a little bit because of the nature of the work that we&#8217;re doing, that you can&#8217;t maybe just hire a professional that has all that.  </p>



<p>I need 10 of those with all the verticals you could think. Right. And so we&#8217;re kind of talking about that shift and that&#8217;s where that see Vale, you&#8217;re truly not a vendor, you&#8217;re partner mm-hmm. In what you&#8217;re doing with them. Like you&#8217;re saying, stick to what you do best. We&#8217;ll take this part, these parts that you don&#8217;t do best and go deep in those.  </p>



<p>And, and I&#8217;m curious your thoughts about all that. You mentioned fractional, so I, I&#8217;m curious what your perspective is of this shift and what you see in the market.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Oh. [00:19:00] Um, I think it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s similar to the, the culture shift, uh, within companies where they want everybody to have culture, but they don&#8217;t necessarily hire based on culture, you know?  </p>



<p>Um, I think, um, building, um, building a team, people talk about fractionals now, right? Oh, fractional cmo, fractional, CFO, and. It, it implies that something&#8217;s broken. I don&#8217;t know, just the language, you know, like fractional. I don&#8217;t need you all the time. I just need you to solve these specific problems. But that&#8217;s inherently broken in and of itself in that, um, you&#8217;re not incorporating someone into the big picture.  </p>



<p>I think of it sort of, uh, my kiddo play soccer, right? So you have these forward positions, these midfield positions, and these, these defensive positions. And not everybody plays at the same time, but they&#8217;re all very important to have on the field. I mean, I wouldn&#8217;t call one a fractional forward, right? I wouldn&#8217;t call one a fractional defender.  </p>



<p>They [00:20:00] know their positions deeply and they operate with the other team members in a way that. Is holistic. It makes sense. You know, they, they work together and they do their job when the time comes. So instead of fractional, um, you know, it, it&#8217;s like a world of fractionals. Now everybody&#8217;s fractional. Um, but if, if we could just reposition the way that vendor relationship, that vendor ideal.  </p>



<p>The, the, oh, you&#8217;re a contractor. No, you, you, if you hire for, for depth in a specific subject matter, then you have a defender standing on the back line. Waiting for their time to, to come in. They know their job. They know their, and you don&#8217;t have to sit up there as forward worrying about will this person be able to handle, handle that role in that, in that attack that&#8217;s coming on.  </p>



<p>Right. So it&#8217;s a mindset shift, I think, for the businesses, and I think it&#8217;s a struggle because. I mean, what? It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s either part-time work or full-time work, right? All of our employment and labor laws are, are based around [00:21:00] 32 hours or 40 hours a week. You have to give people a certain amount of breaks after if they&#8217;ve done so much work.  </p>



<p>You know, this is how the world was built. This is how our, our knowing and understanding of working is. So, uh, I think it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s probably a little more high level than thinking about this idea of fractional and having someone come in and tell me what I need to do and then let me work on it. Um, you know, you, you bring someone in to give you good advice and then map out the action steps.  </p>



<p>And if you&#8217;re capable and you have a team member to do that, then fine. But don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t think I can&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t need a full-time, um, you know, financial officer e who does, you know, I mean, unless you have a huge company, no one&#8217;s sitting there flipping through spreadsheets all day long, making sure that your numbers are in the right column in the spreadsheets, right?  </p>



<p>They, that that financial officer often acts in other capacities. So what&#8217;s the difference, right? If you have a vendor that just doesn&#8217;t do that all the time for you, you pay them whatever that time is worth and valuable to you to do what [00:22:00] you need them to do effectively. And that&#8217;s okay. It doesn&#8217;t need to be defined as anything other than teamwork.  </p>



<p>Uh, but that&#8217;s a hard concept to wrap your mind around when you&#8217;re in a traditional business setting. Does that make sense?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Oh, it does. It illuminated so much for me with that. I think it&#8217;s an analogy, but, um, if, you know businesses are in a game, Organizations are in a game to do something, make money, whatever those.  </p>



<p>You know, from your nonprofits too, is make impact too. Um, but you think about that if the game is business or like soccer. Right. I loved when you said that you st you need certain players on the field to accomplish that and I love that how you said like a defender back here might not. Be the one that everybody thinks about.  </p>



<p>You know, the one that&#8217;s gonna score the goal, but you need someone with the goal going so the ball goes over the heads and you&#8217;re someone there to do this role. And I, I love that. Cause I think it really paints it very beautifully. You&#8217;re trying to do that shift you talked [00:23:00] about too. You need to fill the whole team.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. And you need certain players on the team to get that job done. And I love that, like valet in this instance might have four players. On the team. Mm-hmm. Um, that, that quote aren&#8217;t full-time employees, obviously, but you still need those, you need a goalie back here. You need, uh, those degrees,  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> right. We can still supply you with technical depth.  </p>



<p>We can supply you with design depth. We can supply you with content depth. You know, it, that, that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s the benefit of the different players on the field, whereas you&#8217;re not hiring one person to do SEO 24 hours. You know, a day, uh, or eight hours a day, 40 hours a week rather for going with the working analogy.  </p>



<p>But the, the idea is you, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not any less important to have. To have that available.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, if you use this, I might just kind of continue to, to, to expand on this cause I love it.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Should we say football? Uh, do we have an international audience, should we say?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:24:00] I, I think soccer&#8217;s pretty international so we can stay there.  </p>



<p>Soccer, I just don&#8217;t know as much about soccer, but I&#8217;ll say like, If you think about there as offensive players, and I&#8217;m not sure what they&#8217;re called in soccer, but they&#8217;re the ones that need to go score the, score the goals, hit the hit the goal, hit the mission that you&#8217;re trying to do. The way I think about that before this conversation was stay in your core genius.  </p>



<p>What&#8217;s the thing that people come to you? Because that&#8217;s the word, the magic happens, right? Those are the people you probably might need to continue to retain as a full-time employee, as part of your team.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Well, that&#8217;s your marketing director, right? That&#8217;s your person. That&#8217;s the attacker going up, scoring the goals they know.  </p>



<p>They&#8217;re supported. The ball has been passed up to them. A beautiful cross from, you know, your tech team or your, your content writing team, whatever supports your mm-hmm. Your major goals that you got going on. And then they, they dive right in and. Kick one in the corner of the net because they know, they know the, the, the consumer base.  </p>



<p>They know your customers, they know your keywords. They know what your strategy should be. They know where you wanna go next, you know, and then someone else helps them implement [00:25:00] that. That&#8217;s the most powerful. It&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s no longer a, a game of, uh, how many balls can I juggle, and how many skills can I put on my resume?  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s. It&#8217;s how, how much time have I spent on this one skill has become, um, I, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s valued as much as it should be. It&#8217;s something that businesses value in vendors, which I find very interesting. But they don&#8217;t necessarily value in, in immediate hires, I think some, as much as they should.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. You know, vendors. How, how many times have you, have you, uh, drawn a red balloon for a company in the healthcare space like me? Right? Is that really important or should you be more concerned about. What kind of tools do I use to draw my red balloon? What color red am I using? You know, is there a specific healthcare friendly color palette that we&#8217;re using or, or those sorts of things that are, that are supportive of, of the skill that I&#8217;ve spent so much time working on design, and can I make a realistic balloon?  </p>



<p>Doesn&#8217;t matter if I&#8217;ve drawn 500 of them, if they look like. Anime and that&#8217;s not what you want then. Mm-hmm. You know, it doesn&#8217;t really help you out any. Right. Do you want a realistic [00:26:00] balloon then? Yes. I&#8217;ve drawn hundreds of realistic balloons in many different colors. Or, you know, it&#8217;s, I&#8217;m probably going off the rails with that, but point being, it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s not valued as much, uh, with vendors or, or, uh, it&#8217;s not valued much with instant hires as much as it&#8217;s required of vendors.  </p>



<p>Right. You have, you have to have this very deep and specific knowledge. Well, you hire, you hire in-house, and you want someone to have 17 skills. I&#8217;ve seen so many LinkedIn, WordPress, uh, job postings in the last couple of months, especially with the flood in the market. And it&#8217;s like, must have deep knowledge of c s s must be able to project, manage and communicate effectively across team members must be able to, uh, turn concepts into action plans and must know css.  </p>



<p>Do you know if you want anybody to know? Sorry. You know, if you want anybody to know those things deeply enough to do them effectively at well, You know, with all of the cross browser, um, things that you need to know and, and accessibility and, and all that kind of stuff, like, [00:27:00] that&#8217;s a big, big ask. Yeah. Big ask for one human.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Absolutely. And that, that&#8217;s just defining that role too of agency. You think about what you do at Val as you find, recruit, train, uh, hire all those, those professionals that fit that job description. But would go, I probably wouldn&#8217;t be as interested doing that role at an organization, but that you find a team of those there.  </p>



<p>You&#8217;re doing all of that work that takes time, energy, all that expertise to do all that. Why not let it over here? And you think about, there&#8217;s one note you mentioned in the job skills. It&#8217;s like being able to communicate across team. It&#8217;s like that&#8217;s your role as CEO of valet is to make sure that your team here of experts.  </p>



<p>Inward press in particular are communicating as a team back to customers. So like why would you take that extra cognitive load too, would be my thought. Stick to the things you do best, the things that, [00:28:00] what you&#8217;re scoring the goals back to soccer, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re the star. Those stars do that for them. What you get to do for those that are the backstop, the defenders, like you said back there.  </p>



<p>I, I, to me I think that&#8217;s way more efficient and realistic. Um, because we know, uh, Lindsay is in the process of hiring under pressure right now, and it just takes so much time to source, find, go through the vetting process, have those co, it&#8217;s just extremely time intensive. And then when we&#8217;re talking to the pre-roll, it&#8217;s like, You know, oftentimes when you&#8217;re hiring somebody, you wanna find the right fit, but you, you always end up, uh, onboarding, training, guiding those people to do the best for what you&#8217;re trying to do as an agency.  </p>



<p>And, uh, I just go, that&#8217;s a lot of effort. We&#8217;ve at, at our previous company, at Themes. That&#8217;s what we did. We hired experts. The things that we weren&#8217;t good at, couldn&#8217;t be good at to, couldn&#8217;t even be. Close to good at find experts with experience and [00:29:00] expertise, pull them in and like back to soccer, I go, the coach is your CEO, your marketing manager out there that needs to execute, but should spend majority of their time on those star players on their team.  </p>



<p>And then source the rest of their team through quality people that are worrying about that all the time. To me, that just feels like no-brainer, by the way, Kimberly. But you know, I&#8217;m, uh, I say I&#8217;m biased, but I just look at it from a business perspective and I go, I like this trend, uh, where that typical vendor relationship should get an enhancement.  </p>



<p>You shouldn&#8217;t think about. Well, You know, they get paid from valet or whatever it is, whatever agency. They&#8217;re not part of our team. But if you think about it and find an agency like Valet that really cares, wants to do a great job and play that role on their team, hey, I think we should upgrade that, that.  </p>



<p>Mindset and approach and attitude of contractors, vendors, and say, well, are they part of our [00:30:00] team? They might be fractionally part of our team, but we don&#8217;t need them a hundred percent of the time. Right. And that&#8217;s where I think about what, what you all offer, and I&#8217;ve told you this for years, I love what you offer because it&#8217;s not just maintenance, it&#8217;s not just these things that you can probably get.  </p>



<p>A number of agencies. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s understanding that mindset, playing those roles on the field for your client. Mm-hmm. Because you all do. And I wanna talk about that. I wanna shift gears a little bit about what you do, because I think your approach is pretty awesome, authentic, I think you all created this category.  </p>



<p>Um, and, but you do it to this level, high level that is, Not just, well, but if you just maintain my website and my updates and my plugin themes, all that kind of stuff, that&#8217;s cool. But it doesn&#8217;t, it doesn&#8217;t to me go that to be that player on the field. Could you talk a little bit about the holistic service?  </p>



<p>Cause you said in the, in the beginning, end to end, it&#8217;s really compelling, but what does that mean?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Okay, well we had many iterations of this. I think we had the [00:31:00] website, health pyramid, and then we had these pillars at one point. Um, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s really the idea that, um, expanding on the, the beliefs of what different stakeholders in a business can do for the, or the website can do for them.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s kind of the flip side of that in the tech stack where now, because there are so many different things required, And so many different niches and expertise and all of these people that follow that you can follow that say, I can tell you how to do X really well. Uh, but that&#8217;s one out of a thousand things that your website does or one out of a thousand things that your, your marketing manager does really end to end is, is conceptual in, um, conversion traffic or can people use your website?  </p>



<p>Is the tech stack healthy? Um, are you performing? You know, are there any opportunities for improvement? But it&#8217;s iterative, right? Because as you, as you grow, as you change things, you need to go back and kind of reevaluate all those. It&#8217;s a [00:32:00] shifting. I haven&#8217;t been able to find a really good graphic for it.  </p>



<p>And I feel like even the pyramid, when we had it, it was probably, it was good, but it wasn&#8217;t the best. Um, still it wasn&#8217;t the most accurate way of, of kind of, Displaying and visually how these things shift, uh, with new people, new processes, new ideas, new initiatives within a company. You know, it, there&#8217;s always something that you, you can look at and there&#8217;s always something to revisit.  </p>



<p>And then when you tie in metrics, right? We started doing these data dashboards and you start tying in metrics and looking at things that you can actually measure and set goals with. Um, you know, then it becomes a whole new ballgame. Well, now you&#8217;re, now you&#8217;re tweaking. Now you&#8217;re, you&#8217;ve entered Formula One and.  </p>



<p>You know, you&#8217;re moving little tiny notches on the engine to get that extra, you know, half a second off your start time or your run time, uh, because you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re really in the big leagues at that point, right? So, um, but even, even in the smaller, the smaller, um, medium business sector, there&#8217;s a lot of people that don&#8217;t realize that [00:33:00] there&#8217;s a lot of layers.  </p>



<p>Uh, good example. Um, we have a wonderful client. Who was looking at their Google page speed times. And of course, we all know it&#8217;s a rabbit hole, right? I want a hundred. No, you don&#8217;t want a hundred, you can&#8217;t get a hundred, uh, for many reasons. But, um, you know, and even if you do, it doesn&#8217;t, it doesn&#8217;t, if you get a hundred, it doesn&#8217;t knock up your, your search engine ratings, right?  </p>



<p>So, you know, what are you actually going for there, right? But, um, we&#8217;re looking at some page speed, low times and had to have a, a big discussion about. Image sizes on a page image weight. So how big the actual file size is. Also, you&#8217;re using a page builder also you&#8217;re using, um, this thing in here. Also, you&#8217;re maxing out two PHP workers every week, um, with the stuff that you need on your tech stack.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s not the hosting that&#8217;s your problem necessarily, but you could be giving your hosting an easier time. So all these things intertwine. They intermix. I had an email [00:34:00] today. You know, uh, I need to move hosting, um, but also wanna do registration and, and webinars later. Glad you mentioned that because just hosting and hosting with webinars and registration for things is, you know, those are two different considerations.  </p>



<p>You need two different things. So, um, it&#8217;s is a, a big. A big thread that runs through all of these things that you need as far as user experience, um, accessibility, usability, tech stack, speed, performance, you know, I mean, optimization, you know, there&#8217;s a lot of, a lot of, a lot of things that overlap. You can&#8217;t just kind of dive deep into one anymore, so you need that end to end where people, you know, you may not.  </p>



<p>Need to dive into all of those things. But you need to, to understand or work with someone who understands that those are all part of the equation. When you&#8217;re having a conversation, it&#8217;s not hitting a hammer, I&#8217;m not hitting a nail with a hammer. You know, you&#8217;re mm-hmm. You&#8217;re looking at, you know, an entire piece of furniture that you&#8217;re trying to put together.  </p>



<p>So if you [00:35:00] cut this one part, maybe those four things fall down. Um, or if you add something here, maybe you weaken another part of the structure. What if we put something here, we can bolster everything. You know, so having that comprehensive knowledge of that&#8217;s what end-to-end, I get in, in, in my words, my many words mm-hmm.  </p>



<p>Means,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> well, we, we talked about the first is like if a web, the website, your organization&#8217;s website is vitally important to your strategy and what you&#8217;re trying to get done. You need someone to go to that has depth of knowledge and breadth. Of, of services that can get you to where you&#8217;re going. So I think at some point you&#8217;re part mechanic, part your tuner upper performance.  </p>



<p>Um, but it&#8217;s like when you are trying to, to do something that&#8217;s integral to your business, that involves your WordPress website, that&#8217;s where valet comes in and why this is compelling to me, cuz you know, one of our, uh, the businesses we have an investment in, we brought to valet because we go, she doesn&#8217;t [00:36:00] need, um, development all the time.  </p>



<p>Right, but sometimes she needs functionality, new features, new things for the website to get done what she&#8217;s trying to get done. And that was why it was so compelling that you also offer bundles. I think of development time where you know, to try to hire that out or try to do a full-time employee is gonna be, I think, near impossible.  </p>



<p>But I love that cause it was co so compelling. She might need this month, three hours of development type work. Well, they have someone to go to that&#8217;s trusted, trained, great communicators to do all that, to get it done. And that&#8217;s why that end ends so interesting. Cause I know in the health pyramid that we talked about, uh, a while back, um, you&#8217;re thinking about all, all, all the way to analytics and metrics.  </p>



<p>To features and functionality too. I just need to create a new page that has these things to, to promote my new, you know, offering those types of services. That&#8217;s what you all offer and I think that&#8217;s [00:37:00] why Vale is really compelling in the space. I wish not to get you just more competitors here, but I wish there was more people that understood like businesses and organizations need this.  </p>



<p>They can&#8217;t, they&#8217;re not just gonna go higher, you know, develop, develop full-time developer rates right now are. Insane. They&#8217;re pretty, and I&#8217;m glad because our professionals are worth it, but that you&#8217;re like, I, I couldn&#8217;t even think 120, $150,000 a year to just get someone that knows the stuff. But from a fractional, time wise, I can get those three, that expertise in bundles just when I need it.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. Um, and then someone that knows all the way from development to metrics, health analytics, performance that understands the connection of faster spot site equals. SEO equals more traffic equals potentially more conversions in that holistic way, I think is pretty, pretty and compelling. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Being able to give advice with, um, [00:38:00] with a, with all of that depth of experience.  </p>



<p>There&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s a story, um, The guy with the hammer that goes to work on a, on a submarine. Have you heard that one? Uhuh? Uh, there&#8217;s, um, they&#8217;re working on a submarine and, and this guy just can&#8217;t quite get, uh, the backend, the propeller work in something&#8217;s going on with it. So he, he goes through his Rolodex and finds this propeller specialist.  </p>



<p>That, that he knows that they&#8217;ve called it in the past when they&#8217;ve hit really, really tough problems. Cuz he is gotta get the submarine work in, he wants to get it going. He, this is the one thing that he just can&#8217;t, you know, solve for some reason. And so he calls the guy in and the guy comes in, he is got this giant toolbox and he spends about 10 minutes looking, poking around, moving some things.  </p>



<p>And he opens up his toolbox and pulls out this teeny tiny hammer and he walks up to the propeller, moves his finger around just a little bit and taps on it twice. And he says it&#8217;s fixed and the guy goes up and he, you know, kind of spins it, oh my gosh, this is great. You fixed it. We can get going. You know, this is a huge piece [00:39:00] of machinery.  </p>



<p>This is a huge project we&#8217;re working on. This is a huge initiative. And the guy says, okay, I&#8217;ll send you an invoice. So he sends him an invoice for $40,000 and the guy was like, he calls him up, he&#8217;s like, man, $40,000. Are you kidding me? And he goes, oh, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll send you an itemized invoice. And it was like, you know, um, uh, $10,000, you know, for my time, and then $30,000 knowing where to tap with the hammer.  </p>



<p>Uh, you know, it&#8217;s that, it&#8217;s that whole idea of, I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s that&#8217;s valued as much, you know, as it was because there&#8217;s so many specialists. Everybody&#8217;s a specialist. So why would you value, um, someone with a, with a broad based knowledge of, of an industry as much as you used to?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, well if you, if you&#8217;re getting married and won a piano player for your wedding, you gotta take into account that person has been probably spending decades.  </p>



<p>Yep. Learning the piano, learning the, the music. Practicing. Practicing to understand and back to the [00:40:00] summer music, exactly where they hit.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> I&#8217;m pretty sure there&#8217;s like a, a Reddit thread with like, all kinds of stories like that. Right? Where what do you mean you, you know, you only gonna, you wanna charge me $250?  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s a one hour wedding, you know, well, classically trained, but okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, so far we talked about the value of the website growing in importance, and so glad to hear that what you&#8217;re seeing too, what we&#8217;re seeing. Um, we&#8217;ve talked about that role of the classic vendor changing, um, in a good way. Finding agencies like we have at Word at, uh, post status WordPress agencies, like Valet has been doing it for.  </p>



<p>Gosh, how, how long have you been doing this, Valerie? I, I said Val and smash it together. Kimberly,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Valerie, it&#8217;ll be my new screen name. Um, a about a little over 10 years. Yeah. It&#8217;s been, it&#8217;s been a long time.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> No kidding. Years. You&#8217;ve seen a lot too. Yeah, so [00:41:00] finding that agency, it has the depth of experience, has the team that can execute, has that knowledge to be that back to the soccer, to be a player or multiple players on your field, so you get to focus on what you do best.  </p>



<p>I think that&#8217;s credible and, and that just, I think, for me is a perspective on our industry, particularly with WordPress. But on the internet, the. Increasing value of, um, both websites and agencies that can do that. Take that down for you. Anything else we missed that you wanna share or, or talk about?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Yeah, we, uh, we soft launched a, a new, um, a new.  </p>



<p>Refresh of the site. Um, we had to readjust our plans based on this, this conversation actually that we&#8217;re having just kind of this change in shift in market, being able to provide more core competencies, um, that are highly skilled. Um, [00:42:00] and then we&#8217;ve kind of, we&#8217;re toying around with a new version of a smaller package.  </p>



<p>That we&#8217;re calling Valet Express. Uh, that kind of gets you a lot of the core things that you need, um, covers that, you know, the, the gives you the basics of the end-to-end. To be able to at least see and look at things. You know, if you want help with them, then you can get help with them, if not, but, um, our, our standard plans have shifted and now include an advisor, um, for the larger ones, uh, to meet at least two times a year.  </p>



<p>So we can kind of stay up to date, keep up with, you know, funding cycles and, you know, uh, group initiatives and, you know, be able to help plan and that kind of stuff. So, um, really excited because I mean, we, we act in an advisory capacity anytime we talk to someone, you know, make an email and an ask a question anytime they want.  </p>



<p>But, um, you know, being present for those, for those meetings and changes and, and discussions is something that we really wanna. Make ourselves more available for, we&#8217;re always [00:43:00] available for it, but we&#8217;re never like, Hey, it&#8217;s time for your six month meeting. You know, we make it more important. Uh, Then it, it smooths, it smooths the process a lot, and I think that&#8217;s a big part of us trying to contribute, to help shift that idea of being, uh, invested.  </p>



<p>We know that we love what we do, and I think that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re good at it is just because we like helping. We like learning. We&#8217;re not invested in selling anything in particular other than just being there, you know, and doing it. Right. We&#8217;re just nerds for. We&#8217;re trying to get it right and, and figure it out.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. So, you know, that&#8217;s what makes us passionate. So, um, you know, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve done a, a little bit of, uh, kind of adjusting. There&#8217;s still more to come, but that was kind of the first. The first big push. There&#8217;ll be lots of other little changes and things we&#8217;re gonna grow and add in. But, uh, you know, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s been exciting.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m so happy.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I&#8217;m so excited. That&#8217;s great. Well, somebody&#8217;s like, Hey, I need a nerd to help how all this fits in. Um, how do they get started and talk, get started talking to you all at Vale. What&#8217;s the next step?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Oh, [00:44:00] we have a contact form on the website. We have a phone call scheduling on the website now, and you can just, hello@valet.io rhymes.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s easy to remember, uh, and, you know, we&#8217;ll, we&#8217;ll talk to you, you know that any, every conversation has to be, um, started with an idea of what you wanna do, where you wanna go, and what your goals are. I mean, that&#8217;s, that makes for the most effective communication. Um, so yeah, that&#8217;s the best way. Just say, hey, and we&#8217;ll say, Hey, what you doing?  </p>



<p>What you wanna do? And we&#8217;ll go from there.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I love it. I think that last part is key. Knowing what you want to do, where you want to go, and then coming to the website advisors vale to figure out how to get there. Absolutely key. Thank you. Kimberly Lepar of valet, CEO. Um, I appreciate your time sharing what you&#8217;re seeing in the market and how you all help connect in with, um, clients for this cool thing we call the Open Web and WordPress.  </p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari:</strong> Yes. Love it. It&#8217;s a place to be.</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:"Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:31:28 +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:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 11";s: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=149137";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-11/";s: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:88769:"<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">From practicing mindfulness to the evolution of WordPress, <a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> cover a wide variety of topics in this episode as they continue the development of their new WordPress plugin, <a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a>. </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"> 48</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/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> move from personal to professional. They offer impactful transparency, from discussing the importance of website speed, user experience, and SEO to practicing mindfulness and finding balance. They share insights on optimizing WordPress websites for performance, including hosting, caching, and image optimization tips. They also discuss the role of content in driving traffic and engagement, as well as strategies for leveraging social media to grow an online presence.</p>



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



<ul>
<li><strong>Imposter Syndrome.</strong> Imposter syndrome is very common among people who work in tech, and it&#8217;s important to acknowledge it and understand that it&#8217;s okay to feel this way. It&#8217;s helpful to talk to others about your feelings and to remind yourself of your accomplishments and skills. It&#8217;s important not to compare yourself to others and focus on your progress and growth. Seeking support from a therapist or coach can be very helpful in managing imposter syndrome.</li>



<li><strong>Slow Hustle.</strong> Take a more intentional, thoughtful, and sustainable approach to work and life. Instead of constantly hustling and working long hours, “slow hustle” focuses on balancing work and rest, taking breaks, and being intentional about your work. Finding a pace that works for you helps in avoiding burnout. “Slow hustle” can help you find more fulfillment and purpose in your work and can be beneficial for long-term success.</li>



<li><strong>Personal Brand. </strong>Building a personal brand can help in various aspects of life. Establish your personal brand by identifying and highlighting your unique skills and strengths, being authentic and consistent, and cultivating relationships. Use social media and online platforms to share your expertise and connect with potential clients or collaborators. Continually invest in your personal and professional development, whether through learning new skills, attending conferences, or seeking mentorship or coaching. Remember the importance of maintaining a positive and professional online presence and reputation, as this can greatly impact your personal brand and career success.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



<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:</h3>



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



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



<li><a href="http://www.apple.com/">Apple</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">SquareSpace</a></li>



<li><a href="https://medium.com/">Medium</a></li>



<li><a href="https://substack.com/">Substack</a></li>



<li><a href="https://ghost.org/">Ghost</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt">Matt Mullenweg&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/chriscoyier?lang=en">Chris Coyier</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/jeffbezos?lang=en">Jeff Bezos</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/finkd?lang=en">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/tferriss">Tim Ferriss</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/marieforleo">Marie Forleo</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/garyvee">Gary Vaynerchuk&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/Casey">Casey Neistat</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/benthompson">Ben Thompson</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/peterthiel?lang=en">Peter Thiel&nbsp;</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="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="wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Session 11 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] Um, we are on session 11, and this is gonna be a fun one. We&#8217;re kind of in rebooting. Last week we talked about, um, blew out the vision and see all the options. And then, um, got some good stuff there. And now I think next step is, um, drum roll. Taking a lane.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yes. Uh, you know, when in, when in, we are a startup, right?  </p>



<p>Like we, we ride razor scooters around our office. Uh, we have a kegerator in our co-working space. String lights. We have string lights, like all the cool kids. Um, we are pivoting. Pivoting is what you do. Oh, there you go.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, I think we talked about, uh, Silicon Valley on H B O [00:01:00] and uh, I actually had a yellow Ford Escape.  </p>



<p>I was driving. It was my commuter car. And uh, it was funny, my team was making fun of me about it cuz uh, ATO, Avi&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Aviato.  </p>



<p>Well, so yeah, the, I think, and I think last time we summarized a bit about how we&#8217;ve arrived here, where the idea came from. Um, and so I, I have a couple of updates that I could start with. Um, the first is, I. Released, uh, an update of Crop Express, um, the, our, our legacy product, um, and or our lead gen product or what have you, um, that now has, uh, there was a, I had not successfully, correctly [00:02:00] implemented the constraints.  </p>



<p>Size constraints. And so that is fixed. Um, and it also now has the, our updated readme that you and I put together from the last call or the call before. Um, and so to me, I want to add one more feature that we had talked about, which was basically a, a, um, power user bypass. Because I even at one point I was like, oh, I, you know, I need an, uh, a circle image cropped, let me quick use my own tool.  </p>



<p>And I went in and it like, you know what it output was, I don&#8217;t remember. 2000 or something. And I was like, wait, this isn&#8217;t, this isn&#8217;t what I want. Like, I want to be able to say, you know, real quick, like we talked about, use it anywhere. Like, just make it a thousand, you know? And so I&#8217;m gonna add, um, a simple dropdown.  </p>



<p>I think what I [00:03:00] wanna do is, Like, first of all, it doesn&#8217;t tell you anywhere in the cropper what it, what size it&#8217;s gonna output it at. Um, uh, you know, you&#8217;ve potentially set that in the setting screen, but you haven&#8217;t, you don&#8217;t know when you&#8217;re actually cropping. And so I want to add that. And then what I think I&#8217;m gonna do is add it as a dropdown.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s like this, you know, based on your settings, this is going to export as 2000 by 2000 or a thousand by a thousand or whatever. But in the dropdown I&#8217;ll have essentially like two x, three x four x, you know, 0.75 x 0.5 x. So it&#8217;ll be, you know, in the dropdown it&#8217;s like, this is going to export at 2000, but from the dropdown you can say 1000 and then bang, um, or something like that.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s just real simple. And then, um, and then if we want to, we can, you know, or total customize and put in, [00:04:00] you can put in. Whatever crazy numbers you want, but the idea of being, you know, quick and easy, you can do something slightly different or proportionately different, logically different.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Hey, gimme one second.  </p>



<p>I forgot to do this.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Sorry. So we start over? Yeah, no, it&#8217;s fine. Um, yeah, so often awesome&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> confirmation cuz like, you value the product that you built, we did together, right? Um, enough to go, I&#8217;m using it, I want to keep using it. And I think that&#8217;s invaluable from a product perspective. Like mm-hmm you what, what&#8217;s there and want to make it, hone it for your own thing, which I think is such a great origin for any product.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Well, and the whole eat your own dog food kind of situation of like, you know, I don&#8217;t want to open Photoshop and add a circle and da da. Like, this should just be easy. Yeah. Um, so, um, with [00:05:00] that, the other, the other thing I wanna do, but I is of lower importance at the moment is to redo Crop Express the website so that it, um, has all the new features and is set up the way we want it.  </p>



<p>But I think that&#8217;ll be a, a weekend hackathon slightly down the road since we are deemphasizing this, the website of it, implementation of it is further deemphasized. Um, so that&#8217;s that. And then, um, let me actually share my screen.  </p>



<p>Share. You see that? All right? Yeah. Okay, so, um, so as we talked about, I had gone somewhat far down the path of, uh, building a plugin that works against, uh, [00:06:00] screenshot Express, which is the screenshot SAS service, a API that I built. Um, so you&#8217;ll see reference to social images, which was just sort of the project name, um, that I started with.  </p>



<p>Um, but I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m so, um, me and my crazy colors, oops, sorry about the dogs. Um, me and my crazy eighties colors. Um, there&#8217;s screenshot express, so I&#8217;m actually pretty, um, pleased with myself, uh, with the implementation that I built initially. So, um, So here&#8217;s what we have so far, essentially is, um, by activating this, it, it should throw you to a welcome screen.  </p>



<p>It currently doesn&#8217;t, um, but it has this very cool, like the colors of the app. Um, and so you can either sign up for an account or you can log in. Um, [00:07:00] so naturally I&#8217;m going to just log in. Um, hopefully you can&#8217;t see my passwords.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um,  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> it signs you in. Um, it shows you what active licenses you have. If you have one already, um, you hit select and then great. It&#8217;s all saved. So that&#8217;s the onboarding. And obviously like that&#8217;s purely technical, but that&#8217;s, you know, all the steps involved with connecting yourself to the screenshot express service.  </p>



<p>Um, and so obviously up for much debate between the two of us, like how we wanna, what we want to call it, how much we wanna obfuscate that we&#8217;re actually using screenshot express, behind the scenes, all that stuff. But at least technically there it is. Um, and then, um, I ripped [00:08:00] out some of the stuff that I had, um, but I think you can, we can sort of illustrate at least the, what we&#8217;ve got in mind here.  </p>



<p>Um, and this is where I, I wanted to start talking through with you. Um, A first imagined workflow, right? So that in my mind, here&#8217;s how this works, right? So you&#8217;re like, I write a blog post and array block editor. Um, and then presumably you&#8217;d save draft or you&#8217;d publish, but let&#8217;s just publish for the sake of it, right?  </p>



<p>Um, and then you&#8217;re like, okay, now I want to promote my blog post. Um, oh, let me add a featured image, upload a file, um, testing nice pretty [00:09:00] landscape set featured image update. I don&#8217;t, this might work. This might not work. But anyway, um, so it&#8217;s like you&#8217;ve got a published blog post and then you say to yourself, okay, now I want to create.  </p>



<p>Images for sharing this to on Twitter and Facebook. Um, and so what I have so far in here, I have to go start, uh, whoops. Open.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s always fun doing it. Live tech demo. N p m,  </p>



<p>no, of course this will work.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I&#8217;m trying to write some notes too when we get there. Um,  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> oh.  </p>



<p>Okay, not you. Next. CSS js. [00:10:00] Oh, welcome. Okay. Why are you not just working?  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> This is real life. Does this sound good?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um,  </p>



<p>it is real, real life social images. I am in the right place. Um, I have the stuff that I was deleting. Uh, it&#8217;s not admin, its build.  </p>



<p>I dunno. This should just work.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, while you&#8217;re doing that, I&#8217;m. I&#8217;m thinking about what you&#8217;d want in the end product. Mm-hmm. The basic. Mm-hmm.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> So plugin. Oh, I didn&#8217;t activate the plugin. Oh no, I did. It&#8217;s there. [00:11:00] Um, oh gosh. I don&#8217;t know. Okay, so whatever. Um, but the idea is, um, wait, I really wanted to show this to you. I frame,  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> go ahead. You, you keep looking.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s what it was. I totally changed this. I totally changed this. Okay, so, um, so there&#8217;s no currently no menu item, but, um, because what I had changed was started doing it all in React and JavaScript, but I was like, you know what, let&#8217;s just do this in, in an easier way. So like that, that whole welcome screen is actually like, you&#8217;re actually hitting a button in the page, reloads.  </p>



<p>And it&#8217;s not the like cool Ajay way to do it, but who cares? It works. So, um, so let&#8217;s see. We do actually build, Hey there. It&#8217;s, so the idea being that, you know, somewhere on this screen you&#8217;re like, okay, it&#8217;s. [00:12:00] Ready to go or you know, here&#8217;s my blog post. There&#8217;s a big button somewhere. Or I had had it up here in the menu item that was like, you know, social images.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s like, okay, you&#8217;re ready to go now build your social images so it takes you to a screen, um, where something like this, right, like this is a dashboard. Um, so we can actually create these things. Um, Instagram card. Right. So like you&#8217;ve got things that you&#8217;re building and the idea being that you&#8217;re choosing a channel, which is what&#8217;s, so channel being Twitter, Facebook, something like that.  </p>



<p>Obviously we will introduce custom ones, but this is what defines the size, right? So like if it&#8217;s Twitter, 1300 by 900, no, 1600 by 900, if it&#8217;s Instagram, 10 80 by 10 80. Um, and then we&#8217;ve also got templates. And so right now I think I [00:13:00] only have, uh, like a simple. Simple one implemented. Um, but the idea is you then it takes you to an edit screen, right?  </p>



<p>So we are on, here&#8217;s my blog post. Um, and I need to, I need a name for what these are called. I don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re called. Um, but you&#8217;ve got, um, you know, the template that you&#8217;ve started with, um, and you should be able to change this as you go. It&#8217;s like, oh, right, I&#8217;m no, I actually want this for Facebook or whatever.  </p>



<p>Right? And the template is, um, again, your starting point, but you&#8217;ve got the idea of being that you then got whatever&#8217;s customizable is this is your preview on the right. So again, here&#8217;s my blog post that was pulled in from the blog post, right? If you want the featured image as the background. Well, I didn&#8217;t implement that, so that&#8217;s not showing, but that&#8217;s what would show, you know, in the background.  </p>



<p>What I do have implemented is, um, if you wanted to show the ti the. The date of the post. [00:14:00] Yeah. Um, right. If you wanted to add a background color, let&#8217;s just make it red, right? So pretend your, you know, your featured image isn&#8217;t there. You can change the font. Um, you can change the size, right? So basically, like, based off of a template you would customize, um, what this looks like.  </p>



<p>So, you know, this is obviously not an accurate representation cuz we&#8217;re saying it&#8217;s Instagram, but pretend it&#8217;s Twitter, it&#8217;s the right proportions. You&#8217;ve got it customized on the right and then you, and then you&#8217;d hit a button that says print essentially, you know, stamp it, create it. Whatever that looks like.  </p>



<p>And then, um, you can go back to your dashboard and we would have the preview of it, um, as it was created. And so then here, or any, anywhere there&#8217;s a button that says download, you know, if it&#8217;s Twitter, then you&#8217;ve got a share directly to Twitter button, upload it to [00:15:00] Buffer kind of thing.  </p>



<p>Cool.  </p>



<p>So that&#8217;s the very clunky version. But you know, again, the, the, the walkthrough that I&#8217;m starting to picture is you create a, um, anything you create in here in WordPress, a post, a page, you then have a button that says, okay, use data from this to populate a template. So it&#8217;s the page title, copy excerpt. Um, You know, featured image, and then you bang through a bunch of templates, you&#8217;re like, oh, there&#8217;s a, the simple template that has the title on the bottom and the featured image is a background.  </p>



<p>You&#8217;ve got the card template that&#8217;s got the featured image above and the title below. You&#8217;ve got the, um, the Post Status template that, you know, you automatically inserts your logo on the left and your featured image on the right [00:16:00] with a title down below. You&#8217;ve got the whatev, what&#8217;s the other one we looked at?  </p>



<p>Um, Freemeus template, that&#8217;s got the flip art, you know, featured image on the right and the title on the left, and lots of white space, whatever, whatever. Um, you know, and you and each one, I guess I&#8217;m picturing, have you used, um, migrate DB Pro from Delicious Brains years ago? Yeah. Um, So they&#8217;ve got this real, you know, if you&#8217;re, um, so it&#8217;s, you know, migrating data from one site to another.  </p>



<p>So you go in and you say, start a new migration, and you plug in the credentials and you plug in your settings. And so you, at any point you can say, go do the migration, push the data, pull the data, um, or you can save this as a template so that you can, you know, go in regularly and say, pull in the data from the site, pull in the data, you know, it&#8217;s a new day.  </p>



<p>Pull in the n the fresh data. And so I&#8217;m picturing that kind of flow where, [00:17:00] um, you know, if, if all you need is, um, if all you need is a Twitter image, then click, click, click and you&#8217;ve got one. Um, but you know, while you&#8217;re in here, if you&#8217;ve got all this configured, there&#8217;s a button that says Save this, you know, as a template for every post.  </p>



<p>And so then the next time you come in here, you know, uh, create a thing from scratch or load your. You know, send it to Corey&#8217;s Twitter template, bang. And it, but again, it pulls in that post data populates your template. So it&#8217;s like your, your Post Status template where it&#8217;s like you&#8217;d set it up once with a logo on the left and your featured image on the right, you&#8217;d hit save.  </p>



<p>This is the Post Status, um, you know, person profile template. And then every time you just come in, drag that down and it automatically throw it on the screen. You could tweak it a little if you needed to, if the title was too long or something, and then hit print and then you&#8217;ve got that image.  </p>



<p>Cool.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:18:00] So yeah, from a workflow standpoint, I think that&#8217;s very, uh, understandable. But this is around like a broader question that leads back to that, um, like the open graph and things like that. So, you know, when you paste the link into Slack or you paste it into Facebook or whatever that is, Um, it&#8217;s pulling some data back from the website,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Correct .  </p>



<p>Most of it populated by something like Yost. Okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So how does Slack, Facebook, different things know which particular image? Like when you create a post and then you put that image in there, there&#8217;s multiple options and dimensions with the channels and stuff. So is that stored somewhere on the backend?  </p>



<p>Like if we, if someone goes, okay, I want it, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, how would that [00:19:00] automatically recognize in those platforms?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Or does it Right? Um, yeah, we&#8217;d have to look into that. Like I know that I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve played with another tool before that generated an open graph image for your blog post. Um, and.  </p>



<p>They, I don&#8217;t remember if it worked or not. I feel like it didn&#8217;t work the way I wanted it to, but it, um, it hooked into Yost. So if you had Yost running, you didn&#8217;t have to say, generate an image and then download an image and then upload an image into Yost. There was a way that it was like that image was saved to the media library.  </p>



<p>And then, um, and then Yost, there was a hook somewhere, I&#8217;m sure in Yost, cuz they&#8217;re real good about that. That said, for the social image point at this one. Or maybe they, they, you know, maybe they updated the metadata, the Yost metadata or something like that. But, [00:20:00] um, but yeah, that&#8217;s, it&#8217;s like I, you know, this is this, like what I just showed is broadly the.  </p>



<p>Um, how we generate images, right? But I think like one of the onboarding things, kind of like Yost walks you through site basics, right? Like we would have some sort of onboarding as part, you know, connect to, to screenshot express. But then like, what do you want to buy? What do, what do you want your defaults to be?  </p>



<p>Create? And it&#8217;s honestly like, it would be a great, um, user onboarding because it&#8217;s like, okay, we&#8217;re gonna create, you know, every website full stop needs a default o OG open graph image. So let&#8217;s show you our little template builder and you&#8217;re gonna build your first template. You know, that&#8217;s your default website homepage, open graph image.  </p>



<p>Done, saved. [00:21:00] And then you can also save this as the default template that&#8217;ll get used for every post. But instead of pulling in the name of your website, it&#8217;ll pull in the name of your post done. And so if you check a box, um, then every post you create, you know, we can have it. Whenever you somehow indicate that you&#8217;ve published, you&#8217;re ready, then it&#8217;ll automatically create that open graph image by default.  </p>



<p>Um, and or, you know, any of these things we can get. I ideally you&#8217;d get to a point where, um, you know, you publish a post, you click, okay, I&#8217;m ready to promote it. There&#8217;s a good word. Like the next stage after creating a thing, a post, a page is to promote it, market it, whatever. You know, click a click here to generate all of the images you&#8217;ve already set up or add new ones or if, you know, if you wanna do it manually every time you can.  </p>



<p>But we could, we could automate a lot of that stuff so that it&#8217;s, you [00:22:00] know, cuz it, yeah, once you get down the road aways, it&#8217;s like the clients that I have that are publishing articles, you know, once or twice a day, presumably they, they might, they would spot check these things, these images created, but, um, but the likely the idea, ideally the, you know, they would click a button and an OG image would be created.  </p>



<p>And also like, if they open that dashboard screen, then it&#8217;s just like, download your Twitter image, download your, or click here to, to download all of them as a zip to then send to the social media manager or something like that.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So the reason I was asking is related back to workflow too. So you go, like, you, you hit on it.  </p>



<p>Where I was thinking there is like, there&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s a site specific open graph thing that just gets populated and then each post has, uh, a nuance of [00:23:00] that kind. I mean, we&#8217;re kind of thinking like a thumbnail in a sense, but like for the social images, um, and back down the workflow, I almost go like, again, not knowing the technical part of this, but I go from a workflow standpoint.  </p>



<p>You created your blog post, you start your build thing and like you don&#8217;t even select a channel. It&#8217;s like here&#8217;s all like here&#8217;s LinkedIn, here&#8217;s Twitter, here&#8217;s Facebook. Yes, here&#8217;s Google things. And they&#8217;re already there and generated not even if you&#8217;re gonna like repost on LinkedIn or. Share, but like they&#8217;re already generated because maybe somebody does share your image on LinkedIn, not you.  </p>



<p>Right. And you want that to show up nicely. Yeah. Um, so that was just my thought is like, first I go, oh, that&#8217;s cool. He is already thought through all the channels, but then I was like, workflow wise, I just want &#8217;em built for me. And maybe I&#8217;m editing some of those.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. We, [00:24:00] you know, I think we define some friendly default and in an onboarding or a setup, we say, you know, by default we are creating, you know, Facebook being Facebook, they didn&#8217;t name it anything.  </p>



<p>They named it Open graph. Twitter came along second, so they have to call it a Twitter card. Um, They&#8217;ll be out of business soon. So it doesn&#8217;t really matter. But, um, but it&#8217;s like, you know, in the onboarding, we&#8217;ll say like, by default, do you want to j Auto generate Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram for each thing you create, yes or no, just toggle using a default, a sensible default.  </p>



<p>And then you can customize that template.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So I think about this with our Slack community because it comes in and like, it never looks the way we wanted to, and I just go, okay, [00:25:00] we can talk about the user options at some point, but I go, I would want every channel, uh, reasonable channel created because you don&#8217;t know if someone&#8217;s gonna put that into Slack or something else.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> True, true, true.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> For the most popular networks. So like, even if you&#8217;re not using it, you think about your visitors and you go, it want, you want it to show up nice and, and look nice. Um, so that was my, that&#8217;s my thinking when I saw that is like, no matter what, this comes back to open graph, like how it, we create those and then they get tagged appropriately with open graph in, in that post.  </p>



<p>Um, I think would be an excellent work focus. Then we could say for the product standpoint, it generates this on, you know, automatically for all the, so that your site looks professional, right? Any, you know, any edge case that&#8217;s gonna happen. You&#8217;ve made in the design, you know, [00:26:00] automation almost, and then post by post, they can, they can edit this, but I like that mindset because then we can say, I was, I was looking up open graph, um, as you were talking just to kind of understand that more.  </p>



<p>And, um, I saw some, some little sample images that came in. I thought, okay, there&#8217;s some cool ideas here. Um, what we&#8217;re doing. If, if we look at the bigger view and this, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m really, this is tied back down to this workflow. What we&#8217;re trying to accomplish is, uh, an easy way to demonstrate an image or some concept of, this is my website where I have done this thing for you.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like a presentation. And, um, some of the images, I was like, oh, there&#8217;s so cool design ideas. But you think about it like, we&#8217;ll go way back to product mockups and like iPhone mockups. You know how they always tilt [00:27:00] &#8217;em. Mm-hmm. And I think we&#8217;re trying to do here, the essence of it is we have a website we do a lot of content for.  </p>



<p>And when we present that in the social channels or wherever it is, we want people to know this is an entity, this is a brand thing. Like, it&#8217;s as silly as the little iPhone mockup when it, you know, or remember those 3D book covers. It&#8217;s that 3d. Same. Oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It&#8217;s all 3D book covers you created, you know, 3D book cover of any PDF you had.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like almost in that sense. This is a website called Post or whatever. And you know, let me show you this real quick,  </p>



<p>but see, like this right here. See how it&#8217;s got the little top shadow? Yep. I&#8217;m not saying that&#8217;s how we do it design wise, but the intention is like these little dots are kind of a signal of this is a website, this is, you know, even, even some of the [00:28:00] updates, like I guess that&#8217;s Facebook, but you&#8217;re like, those are some interesting design thoughts for the templates.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. But see, that kind of thinking is you just made me professional on things I hadn&#8217;t even thought about. Yeah. Because you get to the other side and you see. Um, just like when we went live on Goda or YouTube, it&#8217;s got the default old Post Status logo and you&#8217;re like, what you really want is some semblance of branding for the website.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. And the content. So like this one right here kind of speaks more to the idea of what I&#8217;m talking about is like, that could be a template. Like we could&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Right. Well search for right where you are, search for open graph image template, like in, in, in the Google box at the top, like, uh, image template.  </p>



<p>Should get a bunch of stuff about [00:29:00] tags,  </p>



<p>but nothing too compelling. But yeah, I, I love what, where you&#8217;re going. Like we could.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Like this right here is, you know, there&#8217;s just a frame, like the image. Mm-hmm. I was thinking of it as like, I don&#8217;t know, but there&#8217;s a frame to the image we create. It&#8217;s kind of like displaying, this is on my website. This is Phil website, and I&#8217;m presenting it to you where like, you know, this, I mean, even the Facebook thing, this is kind of ubiquitous with like, there&#8217;s a name, there&#8217;s a logo.  </p>



<p>Yep. There&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s something here. There&#8217;s an image like this, this template format. It&#8217;s pretty standard. People get that. Yep. But even if you did something like logo, something like to give it a fill of this is on the web or something. Yeah, well, like the browser bar kind of thing, I guess.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Well, [00:30:00] and, and, and you can, I mean, my, my intention is I.  </p>



<p>Like, I don&#8217;t want to, I don&#8217;t want to compete with Canva, and I don&#8217;t want to get into that technical, I don&#8217;t wanna go that deep. Um, at least for a long time. We can&#8217;t of like drag and drop, but we can. But I&#8217;ve made it very, very easy to create templates. Um, and, um, and the intent is to use the, um, you know, uh, who does it, WooCommerce or, um, E D D or, um, any number of the big plugins.  </p>



<p>You can, you can copy a template out of a plugin, put it in your theme, and then it&#8217;ll get incorporated into the plugin. So it&#8217;s like, you know, VVA from FIUs is like, Nope, none of these templates do what I need. Um, you know, let me create my own. And so he is, he&#8217;s got a little, his little robot that&#8217;s, you know, pointing at.  </p>



<p>At a browser that has a screenshot of the [00:31:00] website built in, just like you said, um, or the little, you know, avatar of, of the author with their little byline, um, already built in. And, um, and incorporate those into, you know, every template that you, uh, that you create. And subsequently every screenshot of every or every social image that you create for anything.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I&#8217;m on this because we&#8217;ve been, like, I was just telling you I was at trying to do a frame for this, but I go, that&#8217;s really what we&#8217;re capturing. When you create a piece of do something, you, you package it up with a frame and then like, I&#8217;m just roughing this out cause I don&#8217;t have like any InDesign skills, but you go, there&#8217;s a frame up here that shows like,  </p>



<p>Kind of to, to this or this one using that. And then this is just the bar [00:32:00] that says this is a package thing. Then maybe, you know,  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m only diving into this cause I really think it, this could be really simple formula to start that would mm-hmm. Really greatly enhance anything I&#8217;ve done. Um, okay. So site logo. Yep. Name, you know, that kind of goes up there and then,  </p>



<p>and then down here.  </p>



<p>We know this be meta description maybe, or something like that. Or, uh, excerpt.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Excerpt. Yep.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> But like, if you think about that from the, just these elements for a second, right? Like, we packaged that up in a way that fills like this or mm-hmm. Like, don&#8217;t, we&#8217;re not in the Canva game. I mean, maybe you go do that or [00:33:00] maybe you just put it in the stock image.  </p>



<p>But that goes here, we pull this from , pull that from . There&#8217;s a link in there. You&#8217;ve got some simple branding. Oops.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m trying to find the image to copy it. Cause I.  </p>



<p>Like that&#8217;s up here  </p>



<p>and everybody gets to see my awesome.  </p>



<p>But yeah, like in this, we&#8217;d only have to generate something like this. Like I could think we could get this lightly styled. Very right, very lightly styled. Pull in their logo name, have the big image here, and like I think that,  </p>



<p>I mean, gosh, that right there, Corey. Is a significant enhancement to anything most people are doing. It&#8217;s not custom, like, like these we&#8217;re seeing here where [00:34:00] someone, you know, has a full-time team doing this kind of stuff, but like, then we let them be creative with their own images. Hey, we&#8217;re not in that game.  </p>



<p>We&#8217;re in this game of packaging this content.  </p>



<p>And I mean, it&#8217;s like, you know, the, the Facebook one is the, this is the frame up here. That&#8217;s just the image. And this is just the title tag, headline, and description. Yep. That right there would significantly professionalize what we&#8217;re doing, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, and then we&#8217;d have to stylize the, uh, generic one.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yep. And that&#8217;s what I was trying to illustrate with like, so what you&#8217;d saw on the right of my little demo is, you know, the, the title of the blog post featured image in the back. So that&#8217;s like, that&#8217;s one, that&#8217;s one template. Right. And this kind of [00:35:00] thing would be another, or wrapped in a browser. Um, a fake browser would be another.  </p>



<p>And you know, so it&#8217;s, and if they&#8217;re simple to create, mostly done in, um, c s s, then it&#8217;s just a matter of somebody, me or you, or both of us, like essentially cranking these out. I mean, we don&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t want to overwhelm. The point is not to have a gajillion templates, at least not to start with, but a few sensible defaults that, like you said, give gives everybody their initial leg up.  </p>



<p>So like right out of the box, you&#8217;ve got a sensible default, something to work with.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Sorry, I can&#8217;t help myself.  </p>



<p>By the way, the circle logo, you can create with Crop Express.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Give your big image of background color.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> When we first started doing that, I couldn&#8217;t remember how to do that.  </p>



<p>[00:36:00] Yep, there you go.  </p>



<p>I mean, even if you took the frame off.  </p>



<p>We probably want to play with these and see how they looked in the different social platforms, but,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> right. Well, and that&#8217;s, and that&#8217;s the, the joy of this. So it&#8217;s, you know, so there&#8217;s, right now, like I just looked, LinkedIn uses, um, Facebook&#8217;s OG image, um, Instagram you can&#8217;t import. And so outta the box, we&#8217;re only talking about two.  </p>



<p>We&#8217;re talking about Facebook&#8217;s OG image and Twitter card image. So whatever their specs are. Um, and again, because it&#8217;s, we&#8217;re screenshotting, H T M L, it&#8217;s responsive. And so presumably you can use the same mo the same template. Yeah. You know, for both. And it&#8217;s like, okay, well no, I, I don&#8217;t want, I don&#8217;t want the, the Corey template.  </p>



<p>I want the Corey. [00:37:00] Template. It doesn&#8217;t work. Our names are the same. I don&#8217;t want the, the Corey template, I want the Miller template. And that one&#8217;s got a black background. You know, it&#8217;s black on white, so it&#8217;s like your themes on the right there, it&#8217;s like one is black on white, one is white on black, one is gray with, you know, little colors on it.  </p>



<p>Um, and so you&#8217;re like, that&#8217;s what all of my images look like for every post I create. It automatically creates a, um, Facebook or an OG image and a Twitter image. Um, as soon as I hit publish or even before, if I click a button and say, generate based on what&#8217;s, you know, the information that&#8217;s here. Um, and then like you said, as soon as somebody shares it, drops it into Slack, um, shares it via Twitter, Facebook, whatever, like, it&#8217;ll, it&#8217;ll pull in those, the image you want that&#8217;s been generated that is more than just your featured image.  </p>



<p>And then, yeah, we get into this kind of stuff where it&#8217;s like, [00:38:00] what are all of the d you know, these, this is where I guess the channels thing comes in, right? Like, so a channel could not only be, um, you know, technically, like Instagram is a, is a channel, but Instagram has stories which are a vertical 16 by nine to traditional Instagram, which is square.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, you can, you can share horizontal, vertical, or square on Twitter, LinkedIn Carousel is gonna have their own thing. Um, you know, what&#8217;s, what&#8217;s the optimal, you&#8217;re in Google Slides, what&#8217;s the optimal Google slide? Size and shape, like, so we can. Basically that&#8217;s where we once, once we have the, the way to present templates, we can go crazy creating templates for every single channel and every, every scenario.  </p>



<p>Yeah,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I was just [00:39:00] thinking too, the option where you don&#8217;t have an image, but it creates one, an open graph type image for you. Mm-hmm. And what you want.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um,  </p>



<p>well, and this is where we, um, um, we had talked about too, like, uh, you could have a template that looks at the content of the story for anything that&#8217;s in a block quote and pulls out the first block quote or pulls out every block quote and, and generates an image for each of those quotes. So now you&#8217;ve got.  </p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve got three block quotes, you&#8217;ve now got three images that are all sized and stylized for Twitter. And so then you say, okay, post this one today, this one tomorrow, and this one on Thursday  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> capture. This is just me capturing this.  </p>



<p>Like yeah. Even if it hadn&#8217;t open quote, like you don&#8217;t really have an image, but you have a powerful quote in [00:40:00] here. CSS can use some brain, like whatever your default site right is. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Then it pull. I love that. You know, some basic styling. It&#8217;s pulling in your, I mean, Mo um, WordPress Customizer has a place for a logo so we can reach for it there, and otherwise we can say, specify a logo to use across all your templates.  </p>



<p>Um, And it&#8217;ll auto-populate. And then you can obviously drill down and, and customize each one as you, as you mess with it. Um, oras or mess with it as much as you want to.  </p>



<p>And so, um, so backing up, up, up, I&#8217;m creating a system for customizing a couple of templates to start with manually. And your, [00:41:00] let&#8217;s start with featured image kind of comment here to me, which I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m a hundred percent on board with, is the ability to set one of those essentially as a default so that it&#8217;s auto-generated so that the moment you hit publish your story has a handsome OG image.  </p>



<p>And we&#8217;ll see about hooking that into Yost or what have you. And then we can continue to take it further. Cuz it&#8217;s like, yeah, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s at least cover the basics base. Let&#8217;s cover the bases. Me and my sports metaphors. You&#8217;re that guy. Um, let&#8217;s at least do the basic of generating an an OG image, um, which is for better or worse, is the couple of other plug-ins or products that I&#8217;ve seen.  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s where they start. Um, but they also end there. So it&#8217;s like, great, let&#8217;s take it further than that of generating a Twitter card [00:42:00] image, but then also any other image you want. The, the workflow will start to get a little clunky because you are going to have to do something with those images. Upload them to buffer or.  </p>



<p>Upload them manually to Twitter or whatever, but at least those images exist, at least based off of, um, WordPress post data and a template. A template or templates that you&#8217;ve presumably built once and then said, save you can, the next time you publish a post, you hit, generate all these images, download a zip, and then you&#8217;re not, you don&#8217;t have to go to Canva and you don&#8217;t have to tweak, tweak, tweak or copy, you know, duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, and tweak and insert your own data and stuff.  </p>



<p>They&#8217;re just, they&#8217;re just there. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, like, uh, sorry, I, I was thinking too, here, here&#8217;s where I&#8217;m going with this too, is [00:43:00] I would imagine if we can create a, you know, my site, let&#8217;s say has 500 posts on there with no social images. Ooh. See where I&#8217;m going? Yeah. Install and it gives you a base, nicely styled, professional enough thing that can go backwards.  </p>



<p>Yep. Oh, now you&#8217;ve just made shit ton of work. Extremely easy and increased their professionalism. So what I was just doing was thinking about the Sitewide thing. It&#8217;s like it&#8217;s just a simple business card, you know? Yep. Here&#8217;s the logo, here&#8217;s the site, here&#8217;s our tagline. Like that might be it. Yep. Just what we&#8217;ve done, but we&#8217;ve hundred Xed this thing that exists that, you know, you go to all these sites and you&#8217;re like, God, they&#8217;ve got a whole team doing this stuff.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. We just hadn&#8217;t gone, boom, there&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> value, man. Oh, huge. And that&#8217;s [00:44:00] like, that to me is, um, Uh, another Delicious Brain&#8217;s product, the Offload s3. Um, and the free version lets you start today. The pro version among other things, lets you go, go back and essentially catch up.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> See, and that&#8217;s killer. I mean, imagine all these, okay, now we&#8217;ve hit our huge value prop because imagine all the WordPress website maintenance companies that go, by the way, we noticed your, your site is just not displaying too professionally.  </p>



<p>We&#8217;re gonna install this and click it and it&#8217;s done. Yep. Holy shit.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> I mean, and even, even taking that a little further, like if I&#8217;m. Excuse me, I&#8217;m the agency. I come in or I&#8217;m the developer. I come in, I&#8217;m like, you know, yeah, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m building this thing for [00:45:00] you, but, um, we&#8217;re updating this thing for you. But like you said, I&#8217;ve noticed that, you know, a lot of these old pages don&#8217;t have these images, whatever.  </p>



<p>Um, I come in and I set styles. It&#8217;s like, what&#8217;s, what&#8217;s, like you said, what&#8217;s your logo? What&#8217;s your, um, brand colors? What&#8217;s your, you know, and so then it&#8217;s um, it&#8217;s all on brand too.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> It&#8217;s all on brand. And then like I meant any B2B site, so when it shows up, they might go  </p>



<p>like right there. They put incredible fingertip address. Like all the addresses. I mean, this is just nothing but a business card for your website, right? I&#8217;m gonna capture that for marketing.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um, and then, and then [00:46:00] WooCommerce, right? So, so every, every product you already have on your website, it just goes back through and, and populates and you know it, like we&#8217;ve said pre in a, in a previous call, um, you know, product image, bullet points. You probably don&#8217;t wanna do price, but you know, if you&#8217;ve got an if, if each of your products has bullet points or has reviews.  </p>



<p>So picture of image. Title of em or title of product, sorry, picture of product, title of product, 400 reviews, five stars and an excerpt. This widget is the best widget, you know,  </p>



<p>what do you do? What do you see? If[00:47:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p>I go to Amazon, I want share this backpack, copy link. I go over to Post Status. I can find Corey. I say, this is the backpack I&#8217;m looking at.  </p>



<p>What does it do? What does it do? Apparently nothing.  </p>



<p>It just takes something to populate.  </p>



<p>Nothing. I feel like maybe slack&#8217;s being slow or something. Oops.  </p>



<p>Okay. So do you wanna share your window or all? No, I don&#8217;t have anything to share. I was just seeing, I, I went and grabbed a URL from Amazon and pasted it into Post Status. Um, To you to see what it would populate with, but it [00:48:00] didn&#8217;t actually populate anything.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, you know, a basic business card for your website basically is what we&#8217;re doing. And then the on top of that is, you know, something like this,  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> right? Yeah, exactly. And that&#8217;s what I mean by like, so part of the onboarding, which I think would be great cuz it helps people get set up is, you know, upload a logo or specify where a logo is. I mean, Yost does the same thing. Um, and, and so you, you, it&#8217;ll, it&#8217;ll give you the data points that it&#8217;ll give us the data, give the plugin the data points that it needs to build a sensible default.  </p>



<p>And, and so much. And then that&#8217;s your starting point for, you know, every time you wanna share, share a post, you know, start here. Well, no, this one actually [00:49:00] has a, a featured image. Let&#8217;s put that in. Or, you know, if it&#8217;s a, uh, you know, this is your business card for your website, but then, you know, it&#8217;s a woo commerce shop, so you actually want products.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s like, then you&#8217;d say, okay, we&#8217;ll copy this, this business card template, but then, you know, add, show the featured image or something  </p>



<p>and doing,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I mean, doing that, cross the website, um, huge, like 10 times better than what you have. A hundred times better than you have just with some basic, like I&#8217;m talk I, when I did the Google search with the business card, I said, simple, modern business card. That&#8217;s your favicon, or you upload your own little image.  </p>



<p>You got, that&#8217;s your site title, that&#8217;s your site tagline. Maybe that&#8217;s edible. And then you add in your little information. I mean,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> yeah. [00:50:00] Yeah. And, and the default, you know, is all of these sites will go and grab, you know, ideally there&#8217;s an OG image, and so you are creating one in Canva and reimporting it, um, or you, um, or it&#8217;s trying to grab the first image on the page.  </p>



<p>So usually that&#8217;s the featured image. It&#8217;s like, like we said, you know what, what kind of started this whole conversation a month ago now between you and I is the, like, better than a featured image put, put some bullet points on it, put the title, put the, you know, um, whatever, whatever, whatever other data points you can add so that when they share it, it&#8217;s not just an image.  </p>



<p>An abstract image. Oh, it&#8217;s a widget. It&#8217;s like, oh no, it&#8217;s a widget that has these benefits. Buy it on this website.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So an over graph question is, we we&#8217;re talking about generating the HTML snapshot and then making it, or [00:51:00] across the site, but we do have the h html sitting there too. Mm-hmm. I don&#8217;t know how Op grf does that, but, but for what looks like, it seems like it&#8217;s an image, but I mean, we still have the H M L code code rendered somewhere.  </p>



<p>Yep. Okay. So this right here. Oh, I just wanted to go down there to see. Okay. There&#8217;s something here. Basically the value prop is overnight flesh out in a more professional manner. Your open graph, social distributions, I mean, I&#8217;d go back to something like this if I don&#8217;t have a featured image, which I don&#8217;t on most of my blog posts, and, um, it&#8217;ll just pull a simple image that looks a little, it&#8217;s a treatment.  </p>



<p>Like we&#8217;ve been talking about the images. What are you truly trying to do is just show its image. [00:52:00] And if you set your defaults, like having, you know, you&#8217;re like, whatever, you&#8217;re, were yellow or were orange. So  </p>



<p>we probably don&#8217;t wanna do that, but, um Right. You know, right there. Mm-hmm. You just made something a little nicer.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. Or your, you know, logo. Logo in the top right. Or, um, you know, if there isn&#8217;t a featured or, you know, and so if there&#8217;s a featured image, it shows up. If there isn&#8217;t, you have at least got your logo.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, and or the option to, um, We could even have an option that says like, if you don&#8217;t have a featured image, just do a big old logo.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Like, uh, you know, the ultimate guide to social images, you knows the headline,  </p>



<p>[00:53:00] you know, there&#8217;s that option and stuff like that. Anyway, I think there&#8217;s a lot here. All that to say Yep. That with the premise of open, we know it is open graph, but it&#8217;s probably not the marking side, but it&#8217;s like, um, instantly create a more professional open graph presence for your entire site.  </p>



<p>Something better, like these will be images too. And so like, so in that if programmatically we could say that. It&#8217;ll pull your featured image into these, you know, spots and we&#8217;re saving that image that automatically puts an image back into that post, right? Mm-hmm.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Oh yeah, we could do that. So use this as featured image gen generate better image replaced featured image.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I mean, it&#8217;s kinda like the 3D book cover. Those were just generated cuz it was all digital assets. So they wanted a visual way to [00:54:00] do that in the same sample, doing that&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> software too. Remember they start, they would show a box like you&#8217;d buy at Staples, but you couldn&#8217;t actually walk into Staples and buy it.  </p>



<p>Album covers T-shirts. Yeah. I mean there&#8217;s, and, and there&#8217;s good examples online. There&#8217;s lots of little apps now that, um, you can build, um, Build the screenshots or take, take a screenshot and it puts it in a browser and puts it at a tilt, like you said. Um, like we&#8217;d have to play with all that. But, um, put it in a browser wrapper, put it on an iPhone, have somebody smiling and holding it on their iPhone.  </p>



<p>You know, um, yeah. All those things. Like we can, again, once, once we&#8217;ve got the template builder, essentially then our imagination, as long as we can do it in H T M L, then we can create a template that does that and people can build their own too, which is what I really like. Cuz you&#8217;re, [00:55:00] you&#8217;re gonna have nerds like me who will look at, um, look at a couple of hours simple templates and go, oh, cool.  </p>



<p>Let me, let me go build my own specific to my website, my own branding, or, you know, I. Yeah, because, and then we created Marketplace and people could sell the templates and take, get a commission. We&#8217;ll go crazy baby.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. I was just trying to skip this out of, okay, the, this all seems valuable to people, uh, to me, and I think it would be, should be to other people.  </p>



<p>And then, like you said, it, well, I mean, one is creating an open graph image for each post. Um, sitewide in each post, what we have here. I didn&#8217;t, you know, there&#8217;s another benefit that we talked about. It&#8217;s like, well, like for my site would instantly get a bunch of thumbnails or, you know, the book [00:56:00] cover type treatment.  </p>



<p>Um, then you&#8217;ve just told the search engines, I&#8217;ve got new image content. Mm. You&#8217;ve, you&#8217;ve made an update to existing posts, you know? Yep. So, That&#8217;s my, maybe part three or something, but, or I don&#8217;t even know. But, um, I just see that value going. Oh. Cuz you can show, people are tired of seeing, you know, crap.  </p>



<p>You know, you&#8217;re doing all this content work, but you&#8217;re tired of seeing the social distribution, open graph stuff look like crap. This solves that problem with a click. Yep. So that&#8217;s why I wanted to go down this of like, where, I mean, this right here, there&#8217;s a pot of gold here. I mean, if you don&#8217;t, if you have great content in the past, but you don&#8217;t really have a lot of the strong image stuff, then use, use these two.  </p>



<p>Yep. You know, like the table of contents [00:57:00] plug in. Mm-hmm. It&#8217;ll auto generate something and then, you know, you click, click that&#8217;s made, it&#8217;ll pull it and then you go, yeah, sa saved whatever it is. And then now you&#8217;ve added an image. Image search is what we talked about last time. Image search to a blog post with a little bit of, with some automation here.  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s really cool. Um, yeah.  </p>



<p>With, you know, not a, doesn&#8217;t seem like a ton of work for the user side. Um, maybe there&#8217;s a, you know, an option here per post, which is use the excerpt, use the first block quote, find the H two s, the list or something, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And then you just, cuz I was trying to think from em, image&#8217;s, search for a [00:58:00] second, you go, um, that&#8217;s another way to get search engine traffic and visibility for your brand.  </p>



<p>I mean, summarize it. Look, this is, we had this conversation a couple weeks ago. Summarize your content with this kind of  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. The tldr. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So for the template engine, I wanted to get all this cuz it&#8217;s like, well these are all the ingredients that we could potentially want. So that, you know, when you start building it, like, okay, I need to, maybe for an image you can,  </p>



<p>uh, you know, pull, pull H two s, you know. Mm-hmm. Pull the first block, quote and that auto populates in here.  </p>



<p>Okay. Thank you for going all the way down there. Now back to this. Does this give some more fleshed out detail to the [00:59:00] template workflow? The. Workflow conversation.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah, I&#8217;m trying to think of where to start. Um, I think that the workflow that I&#8217;m working on still, still works. I think we start with posts, um, and then we can implement like the sitewide version using whatever we&#8217;ve defined.  </p>



<p>Cuz it&#8217;s like, to me, the post paradigm is ex the example that we will then implement everywhere. Um, so we can basically take whatever little builder I design and stick it back in the welcome. So it&#8217;s like, you know, okay, connect to your, connect your account, let&#8217;s create your site business card. Do you wanna then use this for all all posts?  </p>



<p>Do you wanna then. You know, generate, [01:00:00] generate business cards for each post retroactively. And then do you wanna get into social images? This is kind of cool cuz it&#8217;s like, we&#8217;re not even, in my mind it was, it was about social. Um, like I said, I&#8217;d even, you know, the sort of code name for this project for me was social images.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m writing a post and then I&#8217;m generating an image for Twitter or Facebook, et cetera. But we&#8217;re now talking about like, there&#8217;s so much other value before we even get to social. Technically. I mean, it&#8217;s all technically social cuz it&#8217;s about if you&#8217;re sharing a post, um, than it, than it pulls in the, the featured image or what the OG image.  </p>



<p>But, um, that&#8217;s all, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s great cuz it&#8217;s all, you&#8217;re covering your bases of incoming traffic and then you can go do your outbound marketing.  </p>



<p>The shields are up and then you fire the torpedoes. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> It seems [01:01:00] like, okay. Start with the sidewalk, like you said. And there&#8217;s an option just to make that at the beginning, to make that if no social link or something is there, use this option, then you&#8217;ve professionalized your site. Um, then you could do the per post  </p>



<p>Yeah. Option.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> And then give us all your money if you want to go to do the past ones and or the Woo commerce add-on and or. A hundred other things. We haven&#8217;t, you know, the, the marketing kit generator. So it automatically spits out Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, you know, one click generate, one click download, upload it to buffer, you know, buffer integration, um, or whatever, whatever you use to, [01:02:00] to schedule your social posts.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, all those are even before getting to the post, you could say like this, just generate it through everything on the site. So there is an open graph. Mm-hmm. Image. Then when you want to tweak per post product page, whatever that is, there&#8217;s maybe in post tweaking options where we can say, update from generic, there&#8217;s a fallback to the site wide, and then as you want, you come in here and then we could look at which ones we do.  </p>



<p>We do first.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yep. But I like the idea of a sensible default. I was like, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m picturing again, like one of my sites, client sites is a magazine that&#8217;s been online for 12 years. So m half the half the posts, um, um, so many of the posts have images, random sizes and things like that. [01:03:00] Um, but they&#8217;ve all at least got a title and an image and a publish date.  </p>



<p>Some of that&#8217;s not true, but you know, like you could say, okay, so if somebody for whatever reason, shares a post from 10 years ago, it still looks basically good. Better than it, than, than it looks now where it&#8217;s just a random featured image.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> See, I mean, Okay, so in that you go, here&#8217;s this one for just the site. And then when you go to post, you&#8217;re like, maybe it&#8217;s some treatment like this. Like if there&#8217;s a featured image, don&#8217;t do the generic pull in featured image. Yep. And God, I gotta believe Corey, that the premise is if you can just make your site look professional with a click, and I think that [01:04:00] this, this right here would be the way to start.  </p>



<p>Yeah. Like a default, A default image with an option to apply to.  </p>



<p>And then, you know, if there&#8217;s a featured image in that post, go ahead and create a thumb, you know, a featured image thing. God. Right. So with that, my hypothesis would be  </p>



<p>start here with, and if we can get the applied to all posts that&#8217;s worth a hundred dollars, like instantly, think about how long you&#8217;d have to go to update every post. But in one click you could essentially set a very nice, we&#8217;d have to land the design, you know, just a really nice modern looking design, but like in one click that&#8217;s not worth a hundred dollars, update your open graph.  </p>



<p>Right. [01:05:00] With, and even here, we&#8217;ve said if, if, if a post, if post has featured image, you know, use it with X template. Mm-hmm. If you got that out, like for, for right now, my, my value pro for Post Status would be Yeah. You know? Right. Yeah. Um, then if we wanted to going forward, we could, we could look at for Post Status as a client.  </p>



<p>Okay. Now, ongoing, um, when V2 hits, you know, select an image right there in the post block quote,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> uh, freeform. Yeah. I&#8217;m picturing, um, a screen. It&#8217;s like if we, if we can, you know, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re totally blue, blue skying here. It&#8217;s like, but it&#8217;s, you know, generate image. I wanna generate a bunch of images. [01:06:00] A screen opens up that says, um, looks like it has a featured image.  </p>



<p>Looks like it has a couple of images in line, so check, check, check. So that&#8217;s three. Looks like it has block quotes, you know, two block quotes. Do you want to use them? I&#8217;ll you say this one and not this one, you know? And so it&#8217;s like, now generate, and that&#8217;s fi you know, it just spits out five, five different images and you go, oh yeah, I like this one and this one, you know, that they, it, it fits together well.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, but I think we can,  </p>



<p>with some degree of reliability, we can, we can, we can at least try to pull stuff out. Like we featured Image for sure. Title for sure. Excerpt for sure. Um, I like your idea of, of essentially looking at H two s, um, creating an outline. And so, you know, they could just say, yep, that outline works, that&#8217;s accurate or it&#8217;s not.  </p>



<p>Um, block quotes are easy cuz they&#8217;re surrounded by, if they&#8217;re done right, they&#8217;re H T M L, you know, [01:07:00] it&#8217;s an actual block quote tag. Um, and so they can, they can basically just, you know, we say, here&#8217;s your template. And then here&#8217;s all the elements from the page that we&#8217;ve detected, and you can add your own too, you know, now click a button to sort of put them together.  </p>



<p>Man, I really,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I really like this. I feel, I feel, when we talked about crop express, it was a thing, a utility thing. We thought we needed. We know we needed, and we think hypothesis. Everybody probably needs this mostly, and thi but that was a very tiny detail in a process, right? We just got in a workflow process.  </p>



<p>We just got to a whole site value prop. Um, like just, just right here, [01:08:00] right now, my question would be, do we, do you. We&#8217;re doing this from a SaaS that you&#8217;ve already built in the, in the back. Like it has to take the information, send it over, snapshot it, send it back, right. It&#8217;s almost a blend. Like the plugin in some sense might be some of the design stuff, but it&#8217;s a plugin with a SaaS component to it.  </p>



<p>Right. Um, I don&#8217;t know if that makes it easier, harder, whatever,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> but, right. Well, I mean my, yeah, my, the way I&#8217;d set this stuff up originally was I was like, you know, there&#8217;s an API over there that obviously your average person doesn&#8217;t know about, but you can put any product you want in front of it. And like, I&#8217;m basically just running like a water company, electric company utility.  </p>



<p>Like, I don&#8217;t care if you&#8217;re running a blender or an air conditioner, I&#8217;m just selling you electricity. [01:09:00] So my intention originally was, To just, I, you know, here&#8217;s this thing, it generates screenshots and then build all these little apps in front of it, or you can build your own. Um, and I just charge for screen, you know, per screenshot.  </p>



<p>Um,  </p>



<p>trying to think of, I mean, so it&#8217;s like you look at, um, awesome motives. Optin Monster comes to mind. You know, they are a SaaS that technically works without the WordPress plugin, but it&#8217;s really 99% designed to run with the WordPress plugin, um, for WordPress. And so you pay for a number of impressions or a number of campaigns or, I don&#8217;t remember what, what it is, but it&#8217;s something like that.  </p>



<p>So I think we would definitely want to. We&#8217;ll have to think about that, right? Because it&#8217;s like the number of, if we [01:10:00] go with my model, it&#8217;s very abstracted. Um, you know, it&#8217;s per image generated, but you don&#8217;t want somebody to sit there and go, oh, well, if I generate one more picture, you know, or if I tweak it and then regenerate and tweak it and regenerate, like, Ooh, did I spend it an eighth of a penny?  </p>



<p>Like, you don&#8217;t want people worrying about that. So, um, you know, some, some general, but I, again, I, I control the, the water supply. Um, so we can do it in a way that. You know, you get, you get a thousand images or it&#8217;s per post or per channels, or like, we can do something that makes a lot more sense for the end user or makes sense to the end user without being as technical as, you know, per image generated May, and maybe that is what we want.  </p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know, but we can, we can kind of do what we want. Um, the, the downside is, I don&#8217;t have a lot of information yet [01:11:00] about how much it actually costs, um, per, because I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve generated images for myself in a small quantity, you know, but at scale, I don&#8217;t know yet.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, could we, could we, and I think we should use Post Status, uh, for sure.  </p>



<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s wide open. There&#8217;s no worries there. And I can, I&#8217;ll give you a discount Post Status can pay for that, but I go, I. I want this on Post Status. Um, right. Then we go like, look what we did, we just overnight with one click essentially, um, created here, here&#8217;s what I don&#8217;t know from the technical side.  </p>



<p>So like if we said just you create in there one time the open graph image. Okay. Go back for the entire site, it comes back. This is the default. That&#8217;s one image. Right? Right now I don&#8217;t know what the option for like [01:12:00] just that default business card image here. That&#8217;s one image. Yep. The setting could be, um, you know, apply this one image across site.  </p>



<p>I. I mean, that&#8217;s just saying programmatically in WordPress, that one image in your image library right now attaches No, the default open group across the database. Am I on track there?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Correct. Because yeah, if we do it, um, so that the image comes back and you are hosting it, what do we care? So it, it, we have to pay for a few CPU cycles.  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s it.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So there&#8217;s that without getting pricing or whatever, but I just go that, yeah, I would, I want that today from post tennis. I want. Okay. Yeah. [01:13:00] Then we, we could say, we could use Post Status with, I don&#8217;t know, thousands of articles, but, um, okay. Take most of these, a lot of these posts probably have a featured image in it on our site.  </p>



<p>Yep. And then run that. I would pay the bill post us would pay the bill for that. Now create and just see what kind of thing we&#8217;re looking sure at. You&#8217;ve got a third here. I added though, is like, it&#8217;s one thing to do the feature, just an open graph image, but that&#8217;s not saying crop it for Twitter, Facebook.  </p>



<p>So each post can have five different images. Right.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> And that&#8217;s, and that&#8217;s where it, it gets, I think it, it, it may get tricky for the end user to understand cuz also they&#8217;re like, okay, I&#8217;ve generated images. If I share my page, I see one of those images. But where it lives [01:14:00] somewhere in the media library. But you&#8217;re also showing me these, these other thumbnails.  </p>



<p>One&#8217;s a square that says Instagram under it, but it&#8217;s not on Instagram. Like, what, what do I do with this? You know? And so like, what, that might be a little tricky. Um, that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re talking about, but that&#8217;s, but to me that&#8217;s, you know, that&#8217;s the bigger product that we&#8217;re talking about is like, I, I kind of like the phrase of like media kit generator, where it&#8217;s like for each post create five different images and they, and download them as a zip.  </p>



<p>And so you get a zip file that, um, you know, or I mean, we can have a page click here to open your media kit for this post and you see all those images and there&#8217;s a download button or again, a share out button or what have you. Um, but yeah, each, each post, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the thing right? Is um, As it&#8217;s exponential.  </p>



<p>So it&#8217;s per post, or it&#8217;s, or it&#8217;s each [01:15:00] post. And then however many you want per post. And if, and if each post you wanna have, and this is, this is probably not a retroactive thing, um, but it&#8217;s like I write a post today. I want Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I want three different versions. Say they&#8217;re three block quotes.  </p>



<p>So Facebook times three, Twitter times three, Instagram times three, you know, same, same treatment, but block quote, block quote, block quote. And so I&#8217;m like, okay, because I wanna schedule this to go to tweet today, tomorrow, and the next day. Like that&#8217;s a proper marketing campaign around a post, a new post.  </p>



<p>But that&#8217;s nine social images. Plus open graph. So that&#8217;s 10 per post. And that&#8217;s where it starts to get exponential, you know? Um, not a bad thing. I mean, and these aren&#8217;t expensive cuz [01:16:00] we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re using, you know, cloud computing as you&#8217;d expect. But that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s, it might get complicated. Like we need to think about like per channel or per variation, or maybe it just is per image generated per post, or maybe it&#8217;s just per, it is per, you know, it&#8217;s like okay, every, every post is, you know, uh, 10 cents and you get 10 images per post.  </p>



<p>Cuz I, I, I can&#8217;t imagine that we&#8217;re paying a penny per image at the end of the day. Especially if we push it all back to their media library. We&#8217;re not hosting it, so it doesn&#8217;t, it shouldn&#8217;t cost us anything to ho you know, to ongoing disk space. At some point, we&#8217;ll, we&#8217;ll delete old images that aren&#8217;t getting used or something, but, you know, we say, But how, how you bill for 10 cents.  </p>



<p>Cuz also there&#8217;s this, like, one of the things that I wanted to do when I created Screenshot Express initially, I just, I like the [01:17:00] idea, you know, as we&#8217;ve talked about in, um, previous sessions, we don&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t need this. And so we don&#8217;t need, you know, this is, this is fun for us, this is a pursuit for us, but it&#8217;s not, you know, do or die.  </p>



<p>And so it&#8217;s like, I want to, I want to take every opportunity to like play with conventions. And so part of the thing that, you know, always bugs me about various services, there&#8217;s is there&#8217;s Ford developers, there&#8217;s the pay per cycle, pay per whatever. Um, And then there&#8217;s the other ones that are like, you pay a hundred dollars and you get a hundred things, and if you then need 101, we mark, we bump you up to the next payment tier.  </p>



<p>Um, and that bothers me because it&#8217;s like, well, I, what if I only use 80, then I just gave you money, or the price per thing went up. Um, but the inverse, especially for a lot of non-technical people or in a lot of non-business [01:18:00] thinking people is like, gulp, I don&#8217;t want to pay a dollar per thing because what if somebody hacks my site and uses us out a thousand things that just cost me a thousand dollars.  </p>



<p>Um, and so somewhere in the middle is this like, you know, pay for blocks or, um, you know, like there&#8217;s some friendly way to Yeah. Um, have variable pricing without it, with, you know, with sanity checks or something like that. So I. And I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m way overthinking it. The truth is, is we&#8217;re gonna end up just charging $99, you know, for a thousand images per, per month.  </p>



<p>And, and we can, we can kind of gauge that when we set it up, we&#8217;re like, oh, it looks like you have a thousand blog posts, and so we&#8217;re gonna put you in the thousand dollars tier or whatever, you know, whatever. It&#8217;s,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> um, so it, it, it, it occurs to me for a second just to tuck this through because [01:19:00] No, that&#8217;s, you&#8217;re not overthinking that.  </p>



<p>I think you&#8217;re making sure if you play this out, what that looks like and there&#8217;s some decisions to be made, which are good. I think so. But like, okay. There&#8217;s functionality probably, like I can go to Canva and create an open one, default open graph image. Now applying that across my site is functionality.  </p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know if it exists. Or if it does, right?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Like you&#8217;d need something like, you&#8217;d need something like Yost, but you are, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re plugging in one image. Yeah. Maybe technically two. I think they give you Facebook and Twitter,  </p>



<p>but that&#8217;s definitely, that&#8217;s the easy free onboarding for sure. Yeah. And then I, I honestly think that we, we build this, we run it against Post Status. We run it against my client&#8217;s site. We look at the bills, and two things are gonna [01:20:00] happen. One, we&#8217;re gonna know what our costs are, and two, we will have the experience of using it and go, oh, if, if I didn&#8217;t know better, I would expect to pay for this, this way.  </p>



<p>And just, you know, and ju it&#8217;ll just be like, oh, right, it should be 20 bucks. Month, build monthly.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Now, as I, as I thought about that, I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;ll have to go back to Yos, but I go the ability to take any image I have, whether OMG does this or not, but apply it across the site. And it&#8217;s probably not one, it&#8217;s three.  </p>



<p>Like we&#8217;re talking about, it&#8217;s Google showing up, it&#8217;s Facebook, Twitter, you know, so there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s four images to say or something. Now two and I, huh?  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> There really is only two cuz every, I&#8217;m I, as far as I know, everybody [01:21:00] uses open graph image. Twitter&#8217;s the only one that&#8217;s broken away. Uh oh. Like I just Googled, you know, uh, LinkedIn open graph.  </p>



<p>And the article that comes up says, make your website shareable on LinkedIn. And it says below are the OG tags. And it&#8217;s just, Facebook&#8217;s OG tags. So LinkedIn just uses, use it, not just, but LinkedIn uses the same as Facebook.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Then let me, here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m thinking. This could just, this functionality No, no.  </p>



<p>Create an image, but just a plug in type functionality of see this image, apply it, cross the site to blogs, to everything on my site so that it&#8217;s my reference sensation of my site. If it doesn&#8217;t have other, other things that feels like that could be a [01:22:00] free, free option. A hundred percent. And that&#8217;s valuable to, um, just going, yeah, I went to Camba, I got all my outputs, I wanna put &#8217;em in and I just wanna say, apply that to my site so that instantly everything looks better if it&#8217;s generic.  </p>



<p>Okay. But that&#8217;s like probably a free option for us. Now where I go value though, is right here of I value all of my posts. Not having the generic, but having a minimal treatment. Generat an image for that post that has, if it has a featured image, put a featured image over here. Right. Something like that.  </p>



<p>See, that&#8217;s interesting to me. I think that&#8217;s what we should play with and figure out that. Mm-hmm. Because I go, I want that today and if it costs me $500, I&#8217;d do it. Hmm. If, if basic like, think about doing that [01:23:00] from cama, it&#8217;s gonna take you a month. Oh yeah. Uploading, creating images, downloading and all this stuff.  </p>



<p>But that&#8217;s worth easily $500 for me today of any post on the site has this kind of image treatment with a click. And it&#8217;s in the appropriate image graph now. Just told Google and my media library is under these pages or new images. I&#8217;ve just updated my content.  </p>



<p>Yep. Like now I&#8217;m kind of thinking Corey, like that&#8217;s some version of, this is actually B one that&#8217;s free, but, but this could be, you know, a small, I&#8217;m guessing small free plugin. Upload your image. It&#8217;s applied generically through your site with some real simple, you know, business card template, but this, or use cam [01:24:00] and just put it up there.  </p>



<p>This is powerful to me because I go every,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> it&#8217;s a huge time saver. That&#8217;s the, yeah. Time and money, right is, yeah. Like you said, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re auto generating, And especially if you&#8217;re auto generating in bulk. Yeah. Okay, let&#8217;s sign off. I&#8217;ll go build it. Okay. I&#8217;ll have it to you in 15 minutes. Just kidding.  </p>



<p>Do you have an auto generate button for that? Yeah, it&#8217;s called chat. G p t.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Uh, yeah. Hey, that&#8217;s valuable. Um, what do I need to be thinking about for that? Because I&#8217;m trying to put, I have the post that it&#8217;s head on, but like, okay. What would I want is to be able to go through auto generate headline, an expert excerpt.  </p>



<p>If it has a featured image, put it on there [01:25:00] for each post and be at in my media library attached to my post.  </p>



<p>I mean, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a lot of value. Am I missing something here? Like I go mm-hmm. Something with a button click. You could pretty much create new images packaged, um, in a way. And then telling Google in the net social networks, this now exists for this piece of content.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m having a hard time saying, why wouldn&#8217;t I want that right now? Like I&#8217;ve right for some money, I&#8217;ve instantly updated and created new content for every post on my site.  </p>



<p>And there&#8217;s. I know themes used the featured image, but we, we&#8217;d wanna be careful replacing the featured image. But you go like, a lot of the themes have those, well, like the Frames blog have those little, well, you know, [01:26:00] a lot of sites don&#8217;t even have that.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> The hero. Yep.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> The hero, the thumbnail, whatever that is.  </p>



<p>Where it&#8217;s like in the category archive, you&#8217;ve instantly shown a nice basic modern design treatment with your colors and for everything.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yep. Yeah. And it, I mean, and, and we&#8217;d have a button that says, um, you know, swap for featured image. Like we&#8217;ve taken your featured image, we&#8217;ve put some text over it, you know, if you like this, make your featured image better.  </p>



<p>So then it just one in, one out. We&#8217;re not gonna delete your featured image cuz you could regenerate, want to regenerate the image again or something. But it would, yeah, like, so we&#8217;ll give you that option. Like you probably don&#8217;t want to do it by default. Um, but, so yeah, I, for now, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s wrap up for today.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Yeah. Sorry, I, we went over.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> No, it&#8217;s fine. [01:27:00] Um, you saw my note. I put a couple of things in Slack.  </p>



<p>Sorry, I was in Never Neverland. I like it when you&#8217;re in Never Neverland.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yes. We should get that. Um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> cool. Um, but I think, yeah, I think at this point, like I&#8217;m pretty close to something that does something and, and let&#8217;s have that something, that Alpha version run against. I mean, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s get, create a Post Status staging or something.  </p>



<p>Um, but see what it, you know, Let&#8217;s watch it run because there&#8217;s other technical things. I wanna see, like we said, pricing. I wanna see how long it takes, you know, stuff like that. So let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s get into, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s solve the problem for one and for 10 and for a hundred. And then, [01:28:00] you know, start to, and we&#8217;ll continue to talk about the actual product and we&#8217;ll just, and, you know, we&#8217;re designing a really nice engine.  </p>



<p>Let&#8217;s, we&#8217;ll also talk about what the car looks like and then we can drop the engine in the car.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So there&#8217;s 6,800 posts in, in Post says blog post only. Okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> That would be perfect. That&#8217;s a great number.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That would be  </p>



<p>okay. Okay, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll be thinking about what the card I wanted to look like, but I think it&#8217;s title featured image, the standard branding.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um, and yeah, and like I said, I mean, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve already, I have, I couldn&#8217;t show you, but I have two, you know, two very basic templates started. They are so easy to create.  </p>



<p>We can, we can create 10, you know, in an hour. Just going, [01:29:00] oh, put this here, here, here. Cool. That&#8217;s one. Put this here, here, here. Background image two, you know, cuz I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve, for better or worse, like, I went down the rabbit hole of abstracting a lot of this stuff out. So we can just say, I want a color, you know, I want background color, I want text color, I want, so it&#8217;s just color, color, color, color.  </p>



<p>Font, font, font, font, on and on. So, We can, we can even sit down, like once we have one basic thing that we know is running, working, then you and I could, you know, have one of these calls where we just knock together 10 different templates. Okay?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Thanks man. I lost track of time. Thanks for going&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> over. No, it&#8217;s fine.  </p>



<p>Um, but yeah, so stay on for a minute. Okay. Session 11. End.</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, 27 Apr 2023 21:44:54 +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: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:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress has a new purpose";s: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=329306";s: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:60:"https://buddypress.org/2023/04/buddypress-has-a-new-purpose/";s: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:11420:"<p>Hello! This post is the first in a series of five posts in which we’ll outline the new direction we plan to take regarding plugin maintenance and evolutions. After some introductory words, we‘ll focus on the new BuddyPress purpose that I believe we should adopt for years to come.</p>



<p>We haven‘t forgotten that, at the end of 2021, we had some conversations (<a href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/what-is-the-most-important-thing-buddypress-is-missing/">here</a> &amp; <a href="https://wptavern.com/buddypress-plugin-usage-declining-remaining-contributors-discuss-path-forward" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>) about this « difficult to answer with a few words » question. These happened once the <a href="https://buddypress.org/2022/09/lets-talk-about-us-buddypress/">plugin’s active installs statistics went a bit under 200.000</a>. Our WordPress plugin directory page’s “active installations” value suddenly changed from “200,000+” to “100,000+”—though the actual number only changed from just over 200.000 to about 190.000 active installation&#8211;making this decline seem pretty spectacular <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4c9.png" alt="📉" class="wp-smiley" />. It was nevertheless a great opportunity to think together about how the plugin should evolve now that <a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/03/lets-celebrate-buddypress-15th-anniversary-welcome-the-first-attachments-add-on-features/">15 years</a> have passed since its birth.</p>



<span id="more-329306"></span>



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



<div><span class="dashicons dashicons-buddicons-buddypress-logo"></span></div>



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



<p>First, let me offer some thanks on behalf of the BuddyPress development team:</p>



<ul>
<li>Thanks a lot to the women &amp; men who are trusting the plugin to power their community WordPress sites <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f60d.png" alt="😍" class="wp-smiley" /></li>



<li>Thanks a million to the contributors who share some of their free time, energy or resources with us to maintain the plugin <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f91d.png" alt="🤝" class="wp-smiley" /></li>



<li>Warm gratitude to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://automattic.com" target="_blank">Automattic</a> for providing BuddyPress’s web site, our <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">dev’updates</a> blog as well as our <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/" target="_blank">Trac environment</a>, these tools are essential to BuddyPress &amp; its community <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1faf6.png" alt="🫶" class="wp-smiley" /></li>



<li>Finally huge thanks to everyone of us, members of the team; for 15 years we’ve been working together to maintain &amp; improve this free and open-source plugin <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4aa.png" alt="💪" class="wp-smiley" /></li>
</ul>



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Your feedback: the main points</h2>



<p>I believe we can organize your ideas in 5 categories:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>What should be our main purpose(s)?</strong></li>



<li>How should the plugin be organized?</li>



<li>What features should BuddyPress include?</li>



<li>What improvements does the plugin UI need?</li>



<li>How can we attract and keep new contributors?</li>
</ul>



<p>As introduced earlier into this post, let‘s wrap up your feedback about the first topic and explain how they contributed to what I think should be our new main purpose.</p>



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



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Key feedback about BuddyPress’s purpose</h3>



<ul>
<li>« Communities organized around a product »</li>



<li>« It is the perfect choice for <strong>company intranets</strong> »</li>



<li>« <strong>Private</strong>, <strong>secure</strong> social network just for your friends/family »</li>



<li>« Sites for educational courses, coaching »</li>



<li>&nbsp;« It would have been the collaboration platform of choice over the pandemic had the <strong>privacy</strong> and <strong>security</strong> been there »</li>



<li>« <strong>Needs a more specific mission</strong> and purpose: BuddyVerse »</li>



<li>« <strong>Too </strong><strong>Developer-focused</strong> »</li>
</ul>



<p>As a reminder, here’s our site’s tagline about BuddyPress’s purpose: « <em>Fun &amp; flexible software for online communities, teams, and groups. BuddyPress helps you build any kind of community website using WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more</em>. »</p>



<p>Let’s start with the last point as it contains negative implications: « <strong>too developer-focused</strong> » <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2699.png" alt="⚙" class="wp-smiley" />. </p>



<p>Yes, we have third party plugins or themes in mind at some point during our coding process: our main concern about these is potential compatibility issues. That’s why when we have a doubt, we put backward compatibility code into the plugin. It’s also true we used to primarily think about BuddyPress as a plugin you can build great things on top of it; that’s reflected in the « helps you build » part of our tagline.</p>



<p>This model is interesting as long as third-party plugin authors are very involved with contributing to BuddyPress. However, they do not share their energy &amp; time with us as often as was common in BuddyPress’s early years.</p>



<p>I believe <strong>we now need to satisfy end-users first</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f468-200d-1f469-200d-1f467-200d-1f466.png" alt="👨‍👩‍👧‍👦" class="wp-smiley" />. A reproach I often read in reviews posted about the plugin on <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/buddypress/reviews/" target="_blank">WordPress.org</a> is: « BuddyPress is not including the basic features any end-user would expect so that it&#8217;s needed to install other third party plugins ». And a majority of reviewers are then regularly complaining: « a lot of these plugins have not been updated for a while or worse are no longer maintained ». <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/26a0.png" alt="⚠" class="wp-smiley" /> The problem then is that using these plugins can increase WordPress sites security threats even if BuddyPress benefits from the WP hacker1 program. Being able to <strong>run a safe community</strong> is very important: we don&#8217;t settle in a neighborhood when our security is at risk.</p>



<p><strong>Privacy</strong> is a basic need we absolutely have to satisfy <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f510.png" alt="🔐" class="wp-smiley" />. Yes, BuddyPress can be an interesting choice for company intranets, social stores, family circles or social learning platforms as soon as we can <strong>easily lock some areas of the community pages</strong>.</p>



<p>About federating WordPress site owners updates into a BuddyVerse <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f30d.png" alt="🌍" class="wp-smiley" />, it&#8217;s an amazing idea I already heard of 5 years ago during the WordCamp Europe 2017. As WordPress is powering around 40% of Internet sites, I guess there&#8217;s an interesting potential, but I believe<strong> we need a lot more contributors</strong> to master the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub" target="_blank">ActivityPub protocol</a> (extending the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/" target="_blank">ActivityPub WordPress plugin</a>?) or the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://matrix.org" target="_blank">Matrix standard</a> and required developments to allow 2 or more WordPress instances to follow each others or more globally to achieve a <strong>distributed BuddyPress network</strong>. To avoid missing the « <em>we figured out being chained into social media owned by capricious billionaires was masochist</em>ic » opportunity, maybe we can make a first step into this direction and reach something approaching improving how we deal with RSS feeds &amp; implementing <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/" target="_blank">Webmentions</a>.</p>



<p>To conclude this part of your feedbacks review, I think we need to work in directions so that you can use BuddyPress to:&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">« Get together safely, <strong>in </strong><strong>your own way</strong>, in WordPress ».</p>



<p>I think the « <strong>own</strong> » word is fundamental: compared to social media <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4b8.png" alt="💸" class="wp-smiley" /> where you lose ownership over your data, where this information is used to earn money off your content. <strong>With BuddyPress, you control every aspect of your community</strong>.</p>



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The first two concrete steps</h2>



<p>BuddyPress 12.0, our next major version, will introduce a huge, necessary improvement to make many other improvements possible. We are replacing our Legacy URL parser with a new BP Rewrites API (which is based on the WordPress Rewrite API). We are completely restructuring the way BuddyPress analyzes URLs to decide whether to load community content and what is being requested. The benefits for you:</p>



<ul>
<li>Every BuddyPress URL will be customizable into your language (I heard it was important for SEO).</li>



<li>BuddyPress will finally support plain permalinks.</li>



<li>BP URL parsing will be more reliable &amp; fully compliant with WordPress best practices.</li>
</ul>



<p>Because this change is potentially a breaking one for plugins that won‘t be updated, we‘ll also build a BP Classic plugin, so you‘ll be able to continue enjoying these slow-to-update plugins.</p>



<p>Secondly, <strong>12.0 will also include a new community visibility feature giving you the ability to use BuddyPress to power your private communities</strong>.</p>



<p>We‘ll take more time than usual to reach this 12th milestone. We need to <a href="https://developer.buddypress.org/plugins/">document the needed changes plugin authors</a> will need to perform as well as inform our users what they should do if something goes wrong with the 12.0 upgrade process.</p>



<p><strong>12.0 final release is slated for October 30, and we welcome everyone wishing to <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/participate-and-contribute/">get involved</a></strong>.</p>



<p><strong>How should we organize the plugin?</strong> That’s the second category of your feedback, and we’ll talk about it in the next post of this series.</p>



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



<p><strong>Props</strong>: many thanks to <a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/dcavins/" rel="nofollow">@dcavins</a> for his review <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f970.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:"Thu, 27 Apr 2023 20:37:01 +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: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:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: The Future of Tax Compliance for Your WooCommerce 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:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74958";s: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:65:"https://dothewoo.io/future-of-tax-compliance-woocommerce-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:405:"<p>In the future with tax compliance for your clients, returns, automation and headless are in the forefront.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/future-of-tax-compliance-woocommerce-clients/">The Future of Tax Compliance for Your WooCommerce Clients</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, 27 Apr 2023 11:03:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60:"WPTavern: Kirki Plugin Up for Sale, Development Discontinued";s: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=144071";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://wptavern.com/kirki-plugin-up-for-sale-development-discontinued";s: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:2468:"<p>David Vongries, developer of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/kirki/">Kirki Customizer Framework</a> plugin, <a href="https://kirki.org/blog/goodbye/">announced</a> he is sunsetting the product and will discontinue development and support. Vongries bought the plugin in 2020 from its original creator, Ari Stathopoulos, and grew its user base from 400K to 600K active installs. He <a href="https://kirki.org/blog/kirki-pro-is-now-live/">launched Kirki PRO</a> with additional extensions in March 2022.</p>



<p>&#8220;When I first acquired Kirki in early 2020, I had big plans for it,&#8221; Vongries said. &#8220;Although we were able to execute on step one of the 2-step plan we had for the plugin, as time went on, I lost passion for the project mainly due to the direction WordPress core has taken with Gutenberg.</p>



<p>&#8220;It’s clear to me now that I was too ambitious in taking on the project.&#8221;</p>



<p>Kirki&#8217;s customizer framework enabled theme authors to add custom controls and advanced features to the customizer, including the ability to style it, and add a custom header. Although block theme adoption has been a slow process, the death knell for the Customizer rang years ago. </p>



<p>In 2020, Vongries said that exploring how Kirki could potentially extend Gutenberg was one of his goals. Stathopoulos had also discussed the possibility of moving away from the customizer to work with full-site editing and global styles, helping themes that use Kirki transition to global styles. These goals did not materialize but the potential for them is still there.</p>



<p>Vongries is now looking for someone to acquire the plugin but is committed to providing limited support to users in the meantime, including fixing critical bugs and compatibility issues that happen as the result of WordPress core updates.</p>



<p>&#8220;The current active install count in the WordPress repository is 600,000, which presents a great opportunity to revamp the plugin and get it in front of actual users,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I believe that there’s still great potential in Kirki, and I’m looking for someone who shares that vision to take it forward.&#8221;</p>



<p>Vongries has put a price tag of $30K on the plugin, which includes all the assets &#8211; the website, GitHub, and PRO extensions. No further active development or updates are planned unless Kirki gets acquired by someone who wants to carry it forward.</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, 27 Apr 2023 02:05:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"Post Status: WP Feature Notifications • Prioritizing Performance Benefits • DevBlog updates";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=149109";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"https://poststatus.com/wp-feature-notifications-prioritizing-performance-benefits-devblog-updates/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18443:"<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-april-3-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (April 24, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Tired of the overwhelm of WordPress notifications? Join the WP Feature Notifications effort to streamline the alerts. <br /><br />What performance gains have happened in WordPress 6.2? <br /><br />From the Developer Blog: How webpack and WordPress packages interact. </p></div>


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



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fe_alertCircle kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WP Feature Notifications, Performance in 6.2, and DevBlog updates</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/26a0.png" alt="⚠" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/wp-feature-notifications-2023-status-update/">WP Feature Notifications: 2023 Status Update</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4c8.png" alt="📈" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/the-benefits-of-prioritizing-and-measuring-performance-in-wordpress-6-2/">The benefits of prioritizing and measuring performance in WordPress 6.2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f916.png" alt="🤖" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/how-webpack-and-wordpress-packages-interact/">How webpack and WordPress packages interact</a><br /><br /></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-54-open-webs-bill-of-rights/">WP Briefing: Episode 54: A Bill of Rights for the Open Web</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/share-your-favorite-wordpress-swag-youve-collected-over-the-years/">Share Your Favorite WordPress Swag You’ve Collected Over The&nbsp;Years</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/reminder-organize-a-wp20-celebration-or-join-one-already-scheduled/">Reminder: Organize a WP20 Celebration or Join One Already&nbsp;Scheduled</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-8">
<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/2023/04/25/recap-of-contributor-working-groups-mentorship-chat-on-april-20-2023/">Recap of Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on April 20, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/25/wceu-contributor-day-what-should-we-work-on/">WCEU Contributor Day: What should we work on?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/20/meetup-organizer-newsletter-april-2023/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: APRIL 2023</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/2023/04/19/status-update-on-the-sqlite-project/">Status update on the SQLite project</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/the-benefits-of-prioritizing-and-measuring-performance-in-wordpress-6-2/">The benefits of prioritizing and measuring performance in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/wp-feature-notifications-2023-status-update/">WP Feature Notifications: 2023 Status Update</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/24/a-week-in-core-april-24-2023/">A Week in Core – April 24, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.6? (19 April)</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/how-webpack-and-wordpress-packages-interact/">How webpack and WordPress packages interact</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/per-block-css-with-theme-json/">Per-block CSS with theme.json</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/26/editor-chat-summary-26-april-2023/">Editor chat summary: 26 April, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/04/24/design-share-mar-27-apr-21/">Design Share: Mar 27-Apr 21</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/2023/04/17/integrating-the-mobile-app-documentation-into-helphub/">Integrating the Mobile app documentation into HelpHub</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/17/documentation-team-update-april-17-2023/">Documentation Team Update – April 17, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/24/documentation-team-update-april-24-2023/">Documentation Team Update – April 24, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues">Five for the Future</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues/225">Participate info blocks are not aligned properly</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/five-for-the-future/issues/226">Accessibility: Links text lack context</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/2023/04/25/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-04-26/">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-04-26</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/2023/04/19/showcase-submission-guidelines/">Revitalizing the Showcase</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/2023/04/20/matrix-chat-summary-april-20-2023/">Matrix chat Summary – April 20, 2023</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>
</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/2023/04/24/last-week-openverse-2023-04-17-2023-04-24/">A week in Openverse: 2023-04-17 – 2023-04-24</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/04/20/community-meeting-recap-2023-04-18/">Community Meeting Recap (2023-04-18)</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/2023/04/25/performance-chat-summary-25-april-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 25 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>
</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/2023/04/26/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-april-26-2023-1300-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – April 26, 2023 (13:00 UTC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/24/defining-the-polyglots-contributor-ladder/">Defining the Polyglots contributor ladder</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/13/idea-translate-wordpress-org-tour/">Idea: translate.wordpress.org tour</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/04/13/wordpress-at-20-in-print/">Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress 2013-2023</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/2023/04/support-ticket-triage-session-april-26th-2023-at-0800-utc/">Support ticket triage session – April 26th 2023 at 08:00 UTC</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/04/request-for-input-support-stats/">Request for input: Support Stats</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/2023/04/17/fse-program-testing-call-21-front-page-fun/">FSE Program Testing Call #21: Front Page Fun</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/test/2023/04/25/test-chat-summary-25-april-2023/">Test Chat Summary: 25 April 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/24/table-leads-needed-for-wceu-2023-contributor-day/">Table Leads Needed for WCEU 2023 Contributor Day</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/24/test-team-update-24-april-2023/">Test Team Update: 24 April 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/04/26/themes-team-meeting-notes-march-25-2023/">Themes Team Meeting Notes – April 25, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/25/themes-team-update-april-25-2023/">Themes team update April 25, 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/2023/04/18/meeting-recap-for-april-18th-2023/">Meeting Recap for April 18th, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/04/18/developments-and-customizations-for-training-and-learn-website/">Project: Developments and Customizations for Training and Learn Website</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>
</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/custom-post-types-and-capabilities/">Custom post types and capabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/gu-getting-to-know-the-wordpress-dashboard/">વર્ડપ્રેસ ડેશબોર્ડને જાણવું</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/developing-with-user-roles-and-capabilities/">Developing with user roles and capabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/creating-a-custom-template-with-the-wordpress-site-editor/">Creating a custom template with the WordPress site editor</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-custom-template-in-the-site-editor">Creating a custom template in the Site Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=building-a-page-with-only-patterns-2">Building a page with only patterns</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=introduction-to-block-themes-a-qa">Introduction to Block Themes: A Q&amp;A</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-developing-for-multisite">WP dev livestream: developing for multisite</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=five-for-the-future-how-to-succeed-by-making-ongoing-contributions-to-wordpress">Five for the Future: How to succeed by making ongoing contributions to WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=organizing-diverse-inclusive-wordpress-events-apac">Organizing Diverse &amp; Inclusive WordPress Events APAC</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-add-a-blog-news-page-to-a-wordpress-website">How to add a blog/news page to a WordPress website</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-set-up-a-free-wordpress-test-website">How to set up a free WordPress test website</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-wordpress-multisite-experiments">WP dev livestream: WordPress multisite experiments</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#2023-04-13-1">PHP 8.2.5 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-04-13-2">PHP 8.1.18 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>



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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, 26 Apr 2023 16:34:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"WPTavern: WP Feature Notifications Project Progresses Towards MVP for Standardizing Admin Notifications";s: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=144049";s: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:114:"https://wptavern.com/wp-feature-notifications-project-progresses-towards-mvp-for-standardizing-admin-notifications";s: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:3828:"<p>The WP Feature Notifications project, formerly know as <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/08/05/feature-project-proposal-wp-notify/">WP Notify</a>, is <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/wp-feature-notifications-2023-status-update/">making progress</a> towards creating a better way to manage and deliver notifications in the WordPress admin. Core contributor Jonathan Bossenger started the project in 2019 with a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/08/05/feature-project-proposal-wp-notify/">proposal</a> to build a unified notification center in WordPress that would replace the chaos caused by developers hooking into admin notices, which was not designed to be a notification system.</p>



<p>In the latest 0.2.0 update of the feature plugin, contributors have implemented a more robust JavaScript-based system for standardizing how notifications appear in the admin.</p>



<p>&#8220;What originally started as a<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/21/request-for-feedback-feature-notifications-proof-of-concept/"> UX proof of concept</a> has evolved into a more sophisticated JS-based system for displaying notifications based on serialized data,&#8221; WordPress core contributor Joe Bailey-Roberts said. &#8220;At the moment this uses static dummy data, however in a future update this will interface with the upcoming REST controllers to display persistent data.&#8221;</p>



<img />



<p>The project is restructuring its leadership with Bossenger stepping down as the lead and Bailey-Roberts taking over the position. </p>



<p>Although WP Feature Notifications currently exists as a feature plugin, its contributors are intent on seeing it merged into core when ready, instead of kept as a canonical plugin. They are eager to see the project&#8217;s design and functionality work in concert with the planned modernization of the admin as part of Gutenberg Phase 3.</p>



<p>&#8220;Notification functionality is indeed fundamental, and already in constant use via the admin_notices hook, a workaround that has major issues of standardization and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50486">accessibility</a>,&#8221; Bailey-Roberts said. &#8220;The new API needs to be universal, and available by default, otherwise admin_notices will remain the de facto option.&#8221;</p>



<p>Contributors plan to remove the demo content from the plugin in version 0.3.0 and make it into an MVP (minimum viable product) with a functional notification system. </p>



<p>&#8220;The next (and largest) piece of the puzzle is persistent database storage of notification data,&#8221; Bailey-Roberts said. &#8220;We’re working on finalizing the proposed schema, as well as discussing other issues such as retention, translations, multisite support, and more.&#8221;</p>



<p>In order to keep moving the project forward, contributors are seeking a partnership with a core committer for guidance on preparing the plugin to be a good candidate fore core, as well as additional contributors with PHP and SQL expertise. The feature plugin is <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wp-feature-notifications">available on GitHub</a> for testing.</p>



<p>A solution for notifications in WordPress is critical for improving the admin experience for every user. A standardized way of displaying notifications will make site management a more predictable and less cognitively draining task. The WP Feature Notifications project is still in the early stages but it has some momentum and it needs help. Contributors can join the team&#8217;s weekly office hours on WP Slack in the<a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C2K1C71FE"> #feature-notifications channel</a>, and the project will also have representation at WordCamp Europe&#8217;s Contributor Day.</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, 26 Apr 2023 14:03:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"WPTavern: #73 – Ryan Welcher on Using the create-block Tool to Quickly Scaffold a New Block Plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=144046";s: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:114:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/73-ryan-welcher-on-using-the-create-block-tool-to-quickly-scaffold-a-new-block-plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51496:"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 how a block plugin creation can be speeded up with the create-block tool.</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 podcast I&#8217;m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Ryan Welcher. Ryan is a developer advocate sponsored by Automattic. He has been developing with WordPress since 2009. And before becoming a developer advocate, worked for agencies large and small, and as a freelancer.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you&#8217;ll have come across the new paradigm for content creation, blocks. Every part of your website can now be created and amended as a block. Pages, posts, text, images, headers, footers, navigation, and more.</p>



<p>This has widened what&#8217;s possible for those who don&#8217;t want to mess around with the code of their website. You can add in blocks for almost anything. And change how it looks and behaves from within the block editor interface.</p>



<p>This is an excellent move forward, but there&#8217;s still an impediment for non-technical people because creating a block of your own is difficult. If you are able to use the selection of blocks that ship with WordPress Core, or you can find a third party block which does what you need, great. But if you need something specific, you&#8217;re going to have to create your own block solution. And that can be hard.</p>



<p>Ryan is on the podcast today to tell us about the create-block tool. And how it can make your pathway towards block creation a little easier.</p>



<p>We start off talking about Ryan&#8217;s background and how he became interested in WordPress.</p>



<p>We then move on to how he thinks that the adoption of blocks is becoming more widespread given the maturing of tools and learning materials available.</p>



<p>The conversation then turns to how the create-block tool can help you scaffold your blocks. It&#8217;s not a tool which is going to build the blocks for you, but it will help you set up the environment and build process, which you need to get started. Really it&#8217;s all about saving you time and effort on things which don&#8217;t really you get you building your blocks, but which you need to do that work.</p>



<p>We discuss what you can expect from the create-block tool, and the prior knowledge that you&#8217;ll need to have once the tool has you up and running. What level of expertise do you need, and is the tool under continual development?</p>



<p>We spend a few moments talking about the live streaming which Ryan does each week in which he lived code solutions to view as block-based problems.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve thought about creating your own blocks but have been put off by the technical barrier, 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 all the other episodes.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Ryan Welcher.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Ryan Welcher. Hello.</p>



<p>[00:04:29] Ryan Welcher: Hello. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here today.</p>



<p>[00:04:32] Nathan Wrigley: I&#8217;m really, really happy to have you on the podcast today, because I really need to learn what it is that you are going to be talking about. We&#8217;re going to be talking a great deal about the Create Block Tool, how it works, what it does, how to make it come onto a local computer near you. But before we do that, I wonder Ryan, if you wouldn&#8217;t mind spending just a few moments telling us a little bit about yourself, your backstory, your relationship with WordPress, who you work for, all of that&#8217;s good stuff.</p>



<p>[00:05:00] Ryan Welcher: Yeah, so I am a developer advocate. I&#8217;m sponsored by Automattic. So I&#8217;m part of the five for the future, giving back to the open source project that is WordPress. I&#8217;ve been a developer since about 2004. I started doing flash development. I don&#8217;t know if anyone remembers flash development, but I started doing that. In 2009 I was introduced to WordPress and I haven&#8217;t looked back.</p>



<p>Since then I&#8217;ve worked at, I was a freelancer. I worked at small agencies, large agencies, shout out to 10up, which an amazing place to work, I love that place. Yeah, and so I&#8217;ve just found my way into Dev Rel, which is a very, very fun and exciting and challenging, and way different than what I was doing two years ago. But it&#8217;s been great.</p>



<p>[00:05:41] Nathan Wrigley: Can I go a little bit off piste, against the flow of what the conversation will be about? Could you just tell us a little bit about the way that that job works? So you are sponsored by Automattic, is that a full-time thing?</p>



<p>[00:05:52] Ryan Welcher: It is. I work on a team of Dev Rel, of developer advocates, and our job is to appear on podcasts, speak at conferences, create awareness and work on documentation and do all this sort of stuff. But, sorry, yeah, I cut you off.</p>



<p>[00:06:04] Nathan Wrigley: No, no, it was really just, I&#8217;m curious as to how that role is advertised. Was it something that you saw in like a WordPress space, and you applied for it? And also who is it that decides what your roster of work is? Do you have autonomy there or is there a panel of people that you have to report to and so on?</p>



<p>[00:06:24] Ryan Welcher: Those are great questions. So it was a role that was advertised. I saw someone mention it, and I think the WordPress Slack, the Make Slack. I applied and went through the process there. As far as the work that we do, it&#8217;s kind of a mixed bag. We do have a fair amount of autonomy. This is a newer team. There&#8217;s six of us for the entire internet, so. Sorry, for 43% of the internet. So there&#8217;s a lot of work to do.</p>



<p>We have a focus on improving documentation. That&#8217;s kind of our number one focus at the moment. But, there&#8217;s a lot of smaller projects as well. I try to maintain the Gutenberg Examples repository, which is a GitHub repository that shows examples of working with blocks and some of the various things that you can do with Gutenberg, like a custom admin page that interacts with the data stores in Gutenberg and things like that.</p>



<p>So, I was just at WordCamp Asia, which was an amazing experience. I wasn&#8217;t speaking, but I was meeting with lots of developers and just kind of like schmoozing. I get to schmooze professionally now, which is a lot of fun.</p>



<p>[00:07:16] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s amazing. I do wonder since Gutenberg dropped several years ago now. I mean, it really is, it has been going for many, many years. But there really was a fork in the road for WordPress there, and there was a little bit of tension. Some people didn&#8217;t see the purpose of Gutenberg and ultimately blocks. And I do wonder if roles like yours became more important after that. Do you feel like a need to message and get the word out and educate more after Gutenberg dropped?</p>



<p>[00:07:49] Ryan Welcher: I think yes. I also think that the tech industry, I mean, there&#8217;s always been developer advocates. I remember I went to a flash conference years and years and years ago, and I saw someone speak there who was, what were they called at the time? A platform evangelist for Adobe and was basically doing Dev Rel stuff, like showing what you can do with flash and the new features and cool stuff. So it&#8217;s been around.</p>



<p>I think now people are really starting to see the benefits of it. Especially when you have a large community like WordPress. There&#8217;s so many people. And having people who can help, you know, the education piece. And there&#8217;s a lot of yelling into the void without people like me and our team to hear what you&#8217;re saying. Like, you know, the documentation needs work. Okay, well someone needs to work on that. Now that&#8217;s my job to work on that.</p>



<p>So I definitely think that there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s benefits to Dev Rel in any industry for sure. But I think, to an extent, when 5.0 came out, I think that sort of showed the need for someone to come in and say, hey, you know, do you need help there? Or like, have you heard about this tool? Or what&#8217;s path of least resistance to move from a short code to a block? All those sort of things. So I think yes and no. I think it&#8217;s just overall, having a dev team for the open source project that is WordPress is a great idea to gather feedback and help and just help. Full stop.</p>



<p>[00:09:06] Nathan Wrigley: I think whether it&#8217;s as a result of endeavors from people like you, or just the passage of time. I get the feeling that in the year 2023, the message is really getting through. It seems like the inertia against using blocks seems to be dissipating. I really don&#8217;t seem to be exposed to too many YouTube videos or people on Twitter moaning too much about that anymore. Moaning is probably the wrong word. I should probably reclassify that, questioning it.</p>



<p>[00:09:38] Ryan Welcher: No, I think it&#8217;s a very accurate word.</p>



<p>[00:09:40] Nathan Wrigley: So it feels as though we are at an inflection point. That there&#8217;s enough time that&#8217;s passed. There&#8217;s enough projects out there. There&#8217;s enough people that have released resources and commercial products around the block space.</p>



<p>It kind of feels like it&#8217;s moment has really arrived.</p>



<p>[00:09:57] Ryan Welcher: I agree, yeah</p>



<p>[00:09:59] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe moving from a position now of teaching people that it exists and it&#8217;s an option, into teaching people how to use it and get the most out of it?</p>



<p>[00:10:07] Ryan Welcher: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think since 5.0 the block API has matured, and has stabilized. There was a couple of releases where every release, the function that you called to actually register a block in php, its name changed, and its function parameters changed.</p>



<p>And then there was like one version, and then the next version was a slight variation but the next version was the same name as the first version, but with different parameters. So there&#8217;s some confusion there. And you know, with the introduction of block.json, it&#8217;s the json file that describes what your block does and what its functionality is. Having those pieces sort of stable and consistent have really helped the adoption of blocks and custom blocks.</p>



<p>I think also, and this is a perfect segue into what we&#8217;re talking about today, the tools like to Create Block Package that we&#8217;re going to talk about introduced to best practice and showed people, how do I structure my blocks?</p>



<p>So when I was at 10up, I was at 10up when Gutenberg came out. And we spent a lot of time, the company spent a lot of time trying to figure out, trying to navigate how is this going to work for an agency? How do we build these things? What files go where and things like that.</p>



<p>And so that&#8217;s a huge amount of cognitive dissonance. When you&#8217;re trying to figure out a new api. When you&#8217;re trying to figure out a brand new paradigm. And then you&#8217;ve got to figure out, well, where do my files go? A tool like the Create Block Package just shows you where the recommended structure is. And then that takes away a lot of the guesswork, and then everything becomes consistent at that point.</p>



<p>And then if I&#8217;m working on a project that someone else has worked on, the files at least are in the same place. And, I think the maturity of blocks and the block API has really left a lot of the people who just didn&#8217;t like it kind of behind.</p>



<p>[00:11:39] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so given that we don&#8217;t really have any accurate statistics on who&#8217;s using blocks. What proportion of the 43% of the web that&#8217;s using WordPress have moved over to blocks, or perhaps are sticking with the page builder that they&#8217;ve been using for the last several years and so on. Given that we don&#8217;t really know that, what is the elevator pitch for blocks really? What are the small things that you can mention on a podcast in a short space of time, which really nail your colors to the master and say, okay, this is the promise of blocks? This is what blocks can deliver. This is why it&#8217;s new, and why it&#8217;s worth looking at.</p>



<p>[00:12:14] Ryan Welcher: That&#8217;s a great question. I think that blocks offer, well, first of all, there&#8217;s no theme or plugin lock-in. So that&#8217;s a big concern with, take the example of a freelancer that is hired to build a site and the client is non-technical, but they want to be able to manage their own content.</p>



<p>So, you reach for some of these page builder tools, and now once you&#8217;ve reached for them, you&#8217;re locked into them. That&#8217;s not a criticism, but that is inherently one issue. So with blocks you don&#8217;t have that. Your blocks are part of core and you could still suffer a bit of lock-in, if you went with a very bespoke sort of block set or like a block suite or something, but there&#8217;s definitely some benefits there. You don&#8217;t have a lot of the overhead or any of the overhead that come with some of the larger, page builder plugins, just because they have so many features.</p>



<p>And so there&#8217;s some load considerations there. I think it changes the way that you can look at your content. This is a bit more of a philosophical question, but, so historically when we built a site, we had a title for post content. We had the content, which was like the classic editor. And then we had post meta, and you know tags and categories. But if we wanted to store an extra piece of information with a piece of content, there was really only post meta available to us, because the template that was being shown for the front end that would represent that piece of content ,was controlling the layout.</p>



<p>And so we had to store, let&#8217;s use an example of an author byline. Say we wanted to have guest authors on a site. So we wanted to store that author name. Well, on the template side you would use get post meta, the function, to get that piece of information and, and display it in your template.</p>



<p>Well, now we can do that all with blocks, because our template is the editor, and the way it looks is basically represented almost one-to-one in the block editor experience and the site editor. So you have this question of, do I need all this post meta now? Now I can just store it as a block attribute, and move it around and do what I need to do with it. So I think there&#8217;s lots of good reasons to use blocks. That&#8217;s a few of them maybe.</p>



<p>[00:14:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that&#8217;s great. Thank you. I guess the primary issue is that using something like a page builder, whether or not it&#8217;s got bloat or whether or not you&#8217;ve got the lock in and all of that, is that it&#8217;s relatively straightforward. You just click some buttons essentially. Drag things onto the canvas and you&#8217;re done. In Gutenberg we&#8217;ve got some core blocks, and increasingly you can really start to lay things out with group blocks and cover blocks and things like that. You know, you really can start to finesse the overall design.</p>



<p>But if you want to do anything bespoke, in other words, if you want to create a block which does something that you wish to do, something new, something interesting. Then you&#8217;ve got to create that block. And the barrier to doing that I feel is quite high. I wonder if you&#8217;ve got any thoughts on that? Whether or not the creation of blocks is still in the domain of, how to describe it? You&#8217;ve got to have a certain fairly high level of understanding of all sorts of technologies to make these blocks come into existence. Or do you?</p>



<p>[00:15:12] Ryan Welcher: Well, you do and you don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s kind of like, it&#8217;s the classic developer question, you know. It depends, is always the answer. Whenever you ask a developer something, it&#8217;s always, well, it depends. But, I think yes. You do need to have a certain amount of information. But take blocks out of the equation. If you wanted to make a bespoke WordPress theme, with custom templates, you still need to have a certain level of development experience and a certain level of prowess in php, html, css and things like that.</p>



<p>Now, that&#8217;s not to say that the barrier to entry hasn&#8217;t been raised. Because when I learned WordPress in 2009, I could just copy and paste everything I did into a theme and it worked. Now we&#8217;re with blocks. We&#8217;re looking at, build processes and learning some JavaScript frameworks in React, some knowledge there. So there is, there&#8217;s definitely some things to learn.</p>



<p>Now, there are some tools that can help. Again, this Create Block Package that will kind of get you started and get you a basic scaffold of a block, that you can just then change and add your flourishes to.</p>



<p>I think in general, web development is more complicated than it ever has been. I mean, that&#8217;s maybe because I&#8217;ve been doing it for a long time and I&#8217;m an old man who fears change a little bit, maybe. I don&#8217;t know. But I think that knowing JavaScript and Matt said, you know, learn JavaScript deeply, and it&#8217;s true. I think I felt that pain when I was, starting to work in Gutenberg. I&#8217;m a php first developer. That&#8217;s what I learned. I did a little bit of JavaScript, but not a lot. Learning these new concepts was hard. But, I think it&#8217;s well worth it.</p>



<p>And I think you can do things where you don&#8217;t need to know, you don&#8217;t need to be an expert in React. You don&#8217;t need to be an expert in Webpack and build process. You don&#8217;t need to be that level. If you choose to be that level, you can, but you can do some pretty complicated blocks, with sort of a base understanding of some of the pieces that you need to put together.</p>



<p>And I think part of my job is to help people navigate that stuff. I&#8217;m a big proponent of the Create Block Package. I&#8217;ve worked on the package. I&#8217;ve helped to add features that developers have asked for to make life easier. One big feature was the ability to have multiple blocks be part of the plugin that is generated when you run the package.</p>



<p>So I think there is a barrier to entry, but I think it&#8217;s mitigated by, like, you don&#8217;t need to be an expert in all the things. You don&#8217;t even need to really understand the build process, for example. It&#8217;s provided, and it&#8217;s just run a command and just know that this command does this and this command does that. And really, if you don&#8217;t want to look under the hood, you don&#8217;t have to. It&#8217;s going to work for you.</p>



<p>[00:17:30] Nathan Wrigley: We&#8217;ll get onto the Create Block Tool in a moment, if that&#8217;s all right. But just one last question around this whole education piece and learning about blocks. It feels that there&#8217;s a real concerted effort now to create learning materials. There&#8217;s obviously learn.wordpress.org, and a whole bunch of other things.</p>



<p>I see a lot of videos being created in amongst the community. People like Jonathan Bossenger and Anne McCarthy and so on. And I&#8217;m just wondering if you, well, firstly, if you feel that that&#8217;s the case, if the education piece is a lot better now than it was when you were trying to learn at 10up? In other words it&#8217;s less of an uphill struggle because you&#8217;ve got somewhere to turn to.</p>



<p>[00:18:09] Ryan Welcher: So much less, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:18:11] Nathan Wrigley: So let&#8217;s do that one first. Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:18:13] Ryan Welcher: Absolutely. I think, yeah, you&#8217;re right. I mean, I think that when Gutenberg came out, there was no real pragmatic, like practical, how to use this information. Because it was a new thing and there was a lot being changed and people didn&#8217;t have the resources.</p>



<p>They didn&#8217;t have the knowledge to build the resources. Now we&#8217;re four years in now, and that&#8217;s obviously built up. The folks that learn.wordpress.org doing a fantastic job. Jonathan&#8217;s stuff is great. I&#8217;m going to shamelessly self-promote here. I stream every Thursday at ten thirty Eastern on Twitch, where we do block development live. and I put that on my YouTube channel. And I&#8217;m not the only one. I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s, there are people that are putting out content that is up to date and accessible and easier to figure out the things that you need to do.</p>



<p>Now, there&#8217;s always going to be gaps in that knowledge because the APIs are still evolving, and every time there&#8217;s a new release to the plugin, the Gutenberg plugin, there&#8217;s new features and things like that. But yeah, I think now compared to when 5.0 came out, I think there&#8217;s a lot more really good information out there.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m finding that there&#8217;s older information that hasn&#8217;t been updated. That&#8217;s one of the pitfalls of the writing a tutorial on your blog post or creating a video or doing whatever, is that it&#8217;s sort of a snapshot in time of the APIs. And so it&#8217;s there, but then there&#8217;s, well, hey, did you know that there&#8217;s this new way of doing whatever it is that you&#8217;re doing that&#8217;s a little bit easier, you know, faster, better, smarter, or whatever, right?</p>



<p>[00:19:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Going back to your shameless plug. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? So you say you go live, every Thursday, and we will get from you the URL and will post it into the show notes. Do you have an agenda for that? Do you know what you&#8217;re going to do in advance? Or is it driven by who shows up and what questions they want to be answered?</p>



<p>[00:19:53] Ryan Welcher: it&#8217;s a bit of both. I&#8217;ve been doing it now for about a year and a half. I&#8217;m on Twitch, which is an interesting experience. So I live code. I usually show up with some kind of agenda. Like, for example, right now, last few weeks, every other week I do a stream on the new features that have been released in the Gutenberg plugin.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re not aware, the Gutenberg plugin is on a two week release cycle. So every two weeks we get a new version of that plugin, and then all those versions get rolled up and released into the next version of WordPress Core. I go through the release posts on make.wordpress.org, and we call out some of the more developery refocused things like, a new component is added or a new whatever. So we do that.</p>



<p>The off weeks, I usually build something. Like right now I&#8217;m building a block that integrates with OpenAI to generate images. But the images that are being generated are terrifying because I keep doing like people laughing. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve ever seen OpenAI generate people&#8217;s faces. It&#8217;s the scariest thing I&#8217;ve ever seen in my life. Have a lot of fun doing that.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m actually going to be doing one and I haven&#8217;t done this yet, and again, sorry for the shameless self-promotion here, but in a couple of weeks I&#8217;m going to be doing a bring me your block development issues stream, where I&#8217;m hoping that people will submit these problems that they&#8217;re running into and I&#8217;m going to try to see if I can kind of like fix &#8217;em live. And we&#8217;re going to stream that and see how it goes. It&#8217;s going to be wildly successful or it&#8217;s going to be crickets the whole time. I don&#8217;t know. That&#8217;s usually the only two extremes you get on live.</p>



<p>[00:21:19] Nathan Wrigley: I do like the idea of a, like an open surgery in a way. Where people can show up and give you their problems and presumably the further in advance they can give you the problems, the more of a chance you&#8217;ve got of actually solving them. But that&#8217;s a really interesting idea and an excellent way to help educate people live, watching somebody else do it, not just on a forum or an email chain. Actually seeing it happen and get an explanation for why you&#8217;re doing things and possibly even watching you make mistakes along the way and having to fix your own things, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:21:48] Ryan Welcher: If anyone comes to my stream, you will watch me make mistakes Yeah, I can&#8217;t type when people are watching. There we go, that kind of sums my stream up. But yeah, it&#8217;s a lot of good fun. And we have pretty good community of people who hang out in the chat and discuss things and answer questions and help me. There&#8217;s one guy, I always make fun of him because he shows up and saves the day every time if I&#8217;m running into an issue, he&#8217;s like, here&#8217;s your code. And he just pastes it, and I&#8217;m like, oh okay, great. So now we can move on because Kevin saved my stream. So shout out to Kevin.</p>



<p>[00:22:14] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s a, lovely community feel to it though, isn&#8217;t it? There&#8217;s something really nice about that. But definitely, before we hang up on this call, I will get the location for that and we&#8217;ll post that into the show notes. So if anybody wants to go and hang out with Ryan on a Thursday and watch him live code and possibly take your own troubles and problems and share it with Ryan, yeah, that would be a really amazing enterprise.</p>



<p>Okay, let&#8217;s get onto the, what we probably should have started talking about a while ago, but never mind the Create Block Tool or the Create Block Package. So one of the problems that you highlighted right at the beginning when I said, what makes blocks difficult, is you talked about the tooling and the requirements that you need just to get started. So describe the problem that the tool is solving.</p>



<p>[00:22:58] Ryan Welcher: Sure. So if you want to build a block, there&#8217;s a number of ways that you can do it. But if you wanted to build a block using React and JSX, which is the HTML extension, the JavaScript that React uses, you need a build process. You need the ability to take your JavaScript code and transpile, it&#8217;s a fancy word of saying turn it into something else, into JavaScript that the browser can read.</p>



<p>So to do that you need a build process. And so a build process can be very complicated. Now, build processes have been around forever. If you&#8217;ve heard of Grunt, or you&#8217;ve heard of Bower. There&#8217;s a few, so what we use is Webpack. Now Webpack can be extremely daunting to set up and deal with. The story that I always tell was the first React app I ever built was when I was working for an agency, and they wanted to use Webpack and we went to the Webpack documentation page and all it said was work in progress.</p>



<p>And, it was very funny because the only comment on it was a giant picture of that meme of Picard with his arm stretched out going, why? I wish I had a screenshot of that because that&#8217;s best story ever. Anyway, so that&#8217;s your first issue.</p>



<p>Your second issue is how do you even structure blocks? There&#8217;s a number of files and a number of pieces to a block. And, you know, if you put 10 developers in a room, those 10 developers will have 10 different ways of scaffolding this. So that was always a bit of a problem as well. So what this tool does is it solves those problems first.</p>



<p>So it installs your build process, the one that is actually used by the Gutenberg project as well. It&#8217;s maintained, it&#8217;s got a million little features and you don&#8217;t have to worry about that anymore. And then it also will scaffold the files for your block and put them, give you the names, give you all the files, give you a starting point.</p>



<p>When you run the scaffolding tool, it will prefill a lot of the, sort of, details of your block and give you the starting point. And it bundles it all up inside of a plugin, and so it&#8217;s a WordPress plugin that you can just enable and it installs all the dependencies and it even runs the build process. So you literally run it and then you press activate inside your plugin screen, and then you have an active block.</p>



<p>That takes away so much guesswork and so much busy work of having to like, figure out the naming of things and add files. It doesn&#8217;t sound like a lot, but if you&#8217;re building 20 blocks, and you have to like, copy and paste all your files and go in and rename everything, that can take a lot of work.</p>



<p>[00:25:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I can well imagine how much time that&#8217;s saving. Are there any constraints about where you can install this? So, currently I&#8217;m on a Mac. I presume that we&#8217;re all good to go there. What about Windows, Linux?</p>



<p>[00:25:22] Ryan Welcher: The only thing that you have to have is Node. So you have to have Node installed, because you can run it using a command called npx. And what it does is it, it won&#8217;t download it and add it to your project, but it will just kind of reach out and run it once and then do its thing. So you need to have Node installed.</p>



<p>This does work, to the best of my knowledge, it works pretty well across all the platforms. I believe there is an issue in Windows with a very specific configuration that doesn&#8217;t copy a file to the right place. But that&#8217;s less about the scaffolding tool and more about the build process. But there&#8217;s a lot of people that work on this stuff. So I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s going to be remedied pretty soon, yeah. The only dependency is Node, which is cross platform.</p>



<p>[00:26:02] Nathan Wrigley: Right, okay, perfect. So if I&#8217;ve never done this before and I want to get my first block done. Realistically, how long is it between me thinking, hmm, create block tool, I&#8217;m going to start using that, to having my first block on the page? Are we talking 10 minutes, an hour, less?</p>



<p>[00:26:20] Ryan Welcher: Two minutes. Assuming you have Node installed. Let&#8217;s assume that. You can go to the documentation page and you can run npx at WordPress slash create block and give it a name, and it will prompt you for a bunch of questions. Like, what do you want to call this thing? What name space should it be in? You know, what&#8217;s the description?</p>



<p>It&#8217;ll ask you a bunch of questions and it&#8217;ll just scaffold out the block for you. And the most amount of time is waiting for the dependencies. So that the block needs to be installed and then run. And that, honestly, I did a YouTube video on my channel where I timed it. And I think it took four minutes from start to finish and it was done.</p>



<p>And you have a fully functional plugin with a single block in it. And you enable it, and like I said, the block is available for use immediately. No, the block doesn&#8217;t do anything. It&#8217;s a very, very simple block. But that&#8217;s how quickly you can get up and running with it.</p>



<p>[00:27:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think it&#8217;s probably very important at this point to describe the limitations, because when I heard about Create Block Tool, I thought to myself, oh great, a tool which is going to help me to create blocks. Not literally create a block, but, you know, add in options and different, custom data and all of that. And that was what I was thinking I was going to get. So just draw a line, make it really clear what you get when this process is complete.</p>



<p>[00:27:34] Ryan Welcher: You get what&#8217;s referred to as a static block. So there&#8217;s two types of blocks, static and dynamic. And I can get into that if you want, and with no controls. So basically the block will, it shows you a message when you insert, it says hello from the post editor. And then it&#8217;ll render that same message on the front end, and there&#8217;s some CSS that&#8217;s supplied to the front end and the back end.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s a very, very, very basic block. The tool doesn&#8217;t have the ability to say, I want to be able to insert post meta. We can&#8217;t do any of that level of customization, because there&#8217;s just too many options. Like there&#8217;s too many ways that you can build a block, and too many things a block can do. So there&#8217;s just no, there&#8217;s no way for us to build a tool that says, I want to build a block that accesses the REST API to retrieve this custom post type and display all of the information and do all the stuff.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s not something that the tool can do. But, what you get is a fully functioning, working block that is scaffolded to best practices, follows best practices. That shows you how to deal with the CSS, and how to enqueue all your different files, and everything is just built and ready to go for you.</p>



<p>And then at that point you have a starting point. So, as a developer, I used to hate having to do the busy work. What this does is this basically gets me a starting point, and now I can add the things that the client is paying me to do, right? I can add the controls. I can add the interface items, whatever you&#8217;re building in your block. Iit gives you the starting point to actually build the thing that you want to build, not the, you don&#8217;t have to do any ramp up to get there.</p>



<p>[00:29:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, so within two or three minutes you&#8217;ll have a block. All of the files in the right place. Everything&#8217;s set up. Good to go. And then, really, dear developer, it&#8217;s over to you. You got to figure out where to go from there. Do you have any, is there any sort of commenting in the files that&#8217;s been added additionally to give you some sort of pointers as to, okay, this is what this is doing, this file is used for this and so on?</p>



<p>[00:29:24] Ryan Welcher: There is. It&#8217;s commented fairly decently. There&#8217;s kind of a fine line because if you want to use these for production, you know you&#8217;re going to be removing a lot of those comments. There&#8217;s a couple of files that every time I use it, I hate how well commented it is because I like to structure my files in a specific way. So there&#8217;s a lot in there.</p>



<p>And then, at this point too, the sort of, the structure, the file structure&#8217;s very well documented and it&#8217;s just been adopted. People can change things and people can, it&#8217;s very flexible. You can do it whatever you want, but the best practice has been well defined at this point.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s like that muscle memory thing. People just know that, oh yeah, okay. So I want to go to the edit.js file, because that&#8217;s what I, that&#8217;s what I changed to get it to make changes in the block editor experience and so on and so forth.</p>



<p>[00:30:05] Nathan Wrigley: Do you know if, well, WordPress&#8217;s mission, I suppose, is to democratize publishing. And it would be, I suppose, an endeavor worth undertaking to have a tool which did carry you on from where the Create Block Tool got you to. In other words, a tool which helped you along the process of creating the block.</p>



<p>Do you know if there are any endeavors, any quiet whisperings in the dark corners of Automattic about this kind of tool? Is there any plan to do anything like that so that blocks can be created by, well, non-technical people?</p>



<p>[00:30:38] Ryan Welcher: There are tools out there in the community. Like I would hesitate to say that Automattic has any sort of secret plans, because that&#8217;s not really how it works. It&#8217;s more, it&#8217;s driven by the community. I mean, I know Automattic does employ a lot of developers who do contribute to the project.</p>



<p>But a lot of these tools come from the community and, for people like me to talk to folks and be like, hey, that&#8217;d be a really cool feature to add, to Create Block. There&#8217;s been a number of features where we&#8217;ve been like, you know what? It&#8217;s a really great idea, it&#8217;s too specific. So it might be better served as a tool.</p>



<p>But I will say this, the create block package does have the ability to, you can provide what are called templates. So you can create your own custom template. So you can build a block that does X because you&#8217;ve built a template. So I could build a template that is like, all right, I want to block that interfaces with custom post meta. And so I could build that template and when I run the package, I can point the package at that specific template and it will scaffold the files out, and I will have all of those starting points in there.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s not an interactive tool. I don&#8217;t think where you&#8217;ll see, what do you want this block to do? Like, unless somebody comes up with this really cool OpenAI integration, which might be a lot actually.</p>



<p>[00:31:43] Nathan Wrigley: Somebody will probably do it.</p>



<p>[00:31:45] Ryan Welcher: I&#8217;m sure they will. Blocks can do so many things and they&#8217;re so versatile and they&#8217;re so, it&#8217;s sort of like, how do you even start to define the questions that you ask in the automation process to say, what do you want to do? Like, do you need to access data stores? Sure. Is it a custom data store or is it one of the ones that Gutenberg provides? You know, so there&#8217;s a lot, there&#8217;s a lot that goes in there.</p>



<p>[00:32:06] Nathan Wrigley: Does the tool itself get regular updates? I&#8217;m imagining that the technology behind that is fairly fast moving, and there&#8217;s a lot of new updates.</p>



<p>[00:32:15] Ryan Welcher: It is being updated regularly. The package itself gets updated every two weeks when the Gutenberg project, so when the Guttenberg plugin is in release candidate. But there are features being added all the time.</p>



<p>For example, we added the feature not too long ago to be able to copy php files around. And, there&#8217;s a lot of sort of under the hood things that, I&#8217;m drawing a complete blank of all the features that I&#8217;ve added to this thing, but we&#8217;ve added a whole bunch. Here&#8217;s an example. So when you scaffold out the block, all of your JavaScript files sit inside a SRC or a source folder. And people, they may not necessarily want that because they might already have a source folder.</p>



<p>They might want to call it something like, so if you have an existing project, you might want to call it blocks instead of source. So what we did was we added the ability to be able to target that differently. So you could call it something else. And this works with the scripts package too. So you could define it a certain way and then have scripts look at that. Or one big feature that people were asking for was, we don&#8217;t want to scaffold a plugin every single time.</p>



<p>If we have an existing plugin, we just want the block. So we built a no plugin mode where you could run it inside your source directory and it would just give you the block files. And now you&#8217;ve got a second block inside that plugin. So those sort of things. And those all came from the community. They all came from people using the package and saying, this is stumbling block for us because we have to copy and paste and move things around.</p>



<p>Why can&#8217;t we just add a command that does it? So we were able to add that stuff in and it&#8217;s, I mean, I think it drives adoption, but it also. The whole point of this is to make people&#8217;s lives easier. If it&#8217;s more work to use the tool than it is to do it manually, then it&#8217;s, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s worth, you know, the juice isn&#8217;t worth the squeeze, so to speak.</p>



<p>[00:33:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point. It just occurs to me that we never said where we find this tool. Do you happen to have a handy URL available?</p>



<p>[00:33:54] Ryan Welcher: Yeah, you can look in the developer.wordpress.org. I&#8217;m not going to read the whole url, but just do a search for create block. All the documentation is available there. It&#8217;s actually hosted on npm. So, I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll add it to the show notes, but the documentation is all there and it explains how to use it and all the available flags and all the available commands that you can do.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s even a more advanced page on creating custom templates. I really love the custom template idea. Well, what do they call it? They call it external templates. External project templates is the official name. And what it allows you to do is like, if you&#8217;re an agency and you want to build blocks in a very specific way, you can define that and then everyone in your agency is going to use that same template with this package.</p>



<p>And you can use local packages, or you can host them on npm if you want to share them. It&#8217;s very, very, very, very versatile. With that, the sky&#8217;s the limit. You can literally do whatever you want.</p>



<p>You can scaffold the block to do anything, and then just target that particular sort of style of block. Like I built one that would do dynamic blocks because at the time the tool didn&#8217;t support dynamic blocks, and now it does, by the way. My template is obsolete now, but that was a thing that we needed. So if you wanted to build a dynamic block, you would just target my template instead of the built-in one, and you would get that sort of flavor of block.</p>



<p>[00:35:06] Nathan Wrigley: You, mentioned a little while ago, maybe 20 minutes or so ago, that there was this dynamic block, and you said you might digress into that, but we never did. So let&#8217;s go down that little path just for a moment, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:35:16] Ryan Welcher: Sure thing. So like I said before, there&#8217;s two types of blocks. We have a static block and we have dynamic blocks. So a static block, the difference is basically where stuff is saved or if it&#8217;s saved. So, in a static block. So all, I&#8217;d say the majority of core blocks are static, meaning that when you hit save, it actually saves the markup into the post content.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s saved to the database. A dynamic block doesn&#8217;t do that. A dynamic block uses php to render the front end, the way we would always sort of, add run until the pages loaded and that file is run, and then it displays its information. And that&#8217;s basically the difference.</p>



<p>Now there&#8217;s some trade offs for both. With static blocks, when there&#8217;s markup changes, you have to do this thing called deprecation. So you tell Gutenberg, if there&#8217;s any developers listening, I&#8217;m sure there are. If you&#8217;ve ever seen that, like, you know, the block, we couldn&#8217;t render the block. There was an error. Everyone&#8217;s seen that error. That&#8217;s because some markup has changed.</p>



<p>You need to deprecate that. So that&#8217;s an extra step. Where with dynamic blocks, you don&#8217;t need to do that because it&#8217;s always run live, so to speak, right? So there&#8217;s some benefits to using a dynamic block for that regard. But the trade out there is you have markup in two places. So that&#8217;s, at a high level, the difference.</p>



<p>[00:36:26] Nathan Wrigley: And the create block tool will point you in the right direction of creating one or the other, depending on which your.</p>



<p>[00:36:33] Ryan Welcher: Yeah, it lets you choose. So there is a flag called a variant, and you can choose between static or dynamic. I believe the default is static. It&#8217;ll give you a static block if you don&#8217;t run that flag. But if you say variant dynamic, it&#8217;ll do a dynamic one. And then there&#8217;s actually, within your templates, this is getting really the weeds, but if you define a template, you can actually have multiple variants. So you could have your own variant. You could have a TypeScript variant for your particular template. Or like a, I don&#8217;t know, Tailwind CSS one. So there&#8217;s a lot of flexibility there is where I&#8217;m going with that.</p>



<p>[00:37:03] Nathan Wrigley: Amazing. So much going on in the WordPress space at the moment. On every level. From straightforward to incredibly complicated. And feel this is on the incredibly complicated side, but really interesting work. You mentioned that you are obviously into this, but there were a couple of other names which came off your tongue earlier. I&#8217;m wondering if in the round, you could just drop some of those names, people that we might like to go and find, as well as yourself, who are working with you, pushing the Create Block Tool.</p>



<p>[00:37:36] Ryan Welcher: There&#8217;s the folks that I work with on my team. I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll know all these names. Birgit Pauli Haack is on the team. She&#8217;s the Brains behind Gutenberg Times and all that stuff. Justin Tadlock is on the team as well. I&#8217;m sure everyone knows Justin. There is Michael Burge who is on our team, and think that&#8217;s it.</p>



<p>[00:37:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Well if there&#8217;s any that you&#8217;ve missed out, you can always fire them over in my direction and we&#8217;ll make sure, that they get into the show notes. If anybody has been listening to this episode and they&#8217;ve thought, you know what, this is curious. This is something that I need to begin to play with, but I would like to find out a little bit more first. We know you&#8217;ve got the Twitch channel, and we&#8217;ll push people towards that. But what other places can people get in touch with you Ryan?</p>



<p>[00:38:19] Ryan Welcher: Sure. I have a YouTube channel as well, so I&#8217;m Ryan Welcher Codes in both places, Twitch and YouTube. I try to answer the comments on YouTube as often as possible, but sometimes I don&#8217;t get to them right away, but I&#8217;m at Ryan Welcher on Twitter and my DMs are open, so feel free.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m Welcher or Ryan Welcher or Welcher Ryan in a million different Slack channels. So, I think I&#8217;m Welcher in Make Slack. I&#8217;m on Post Status. I&#8217;m on Discord in a few places. So just search my name or variations of my name and I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll run into me and, I&#8217;d be happy to speak with anyone one-on-one in a public forum, whatever, whatever works.</p>



<p>[00:38:54] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you for making yourself available, and thank you for talking to us today about the Create Block Package stroke Tool. That&#8217;s been really, really interesting. Ryan, thanks so much.</p>



<p>[00:39:04] Ryan Welcher: Thanks so much for having me and I hope I can come back sometime.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have Ryan Welcher.</p>



<p>Ryan is a developer advocate sponsored by Automattic. He has been developing with WordPress since 2009 and before becoming a developer advocate, worked for agencies large and small and as a freelancer.</p>



<p>If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ll have come across the new paradigm for content creation, blocks. Every part of your website can now be created and amended as a block. Pages, posts, text, images, headers, footers, navigation and more.</p>



<p>This has widened what’s possible for people who don’t want to mess around with the code of their website. You can add in blocks for almost anything, and change how it looks and behaves from within the block editor interface.</p>



<p>This is an excellent move forward, but there’s still an impediment for non-technical people, because creating a block of your own is difficult. If you are able to use the selection of blocks that ship with WordPress Core, or you can find a third party block which does what you need, great, but if you need something specific, you’re going to have to create your own block solution, and that can be hard.</p>



<p>Ryan is on the podcast today to tell you about the create-block tool, and how it can make your pathway towards block creation a little easier.</p>



<p>We start off talking about Ryan’s background, and how he became interested in WordPress. We then move on to how he thinks that the adoption of blocks is becoming more widespread given the maturing of the tools and learning materials available.</p>



<p>The conversation then turns to how the create-block tool can help you scaffold your blocks. It’s not a tool which is going to build the blocks for you, but it will help you set up the environment and build process, which you need to get started. Really, it’s all about saving you time and effort on things which don’t really get you building your blocks, but which you need to do that work.</p>



<p>We discuss what you can expect from the create-block tool, and the prior knowledge that you’ll need to have once the tool has you up and running. What level of expertise do you need, and is the tool under continual development?</p>



<p>We spend a few moments talking about the livestreaming which Ryan does each week in which he live codes solutions to viewers block based problems.</p>



<p>If you’ve thought about creating your own blocks, but have been put off by the technical barrier, this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://10up.com/">10up</a></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg-examples">Gutenberg Examples GitHub repository</a></p>



<p><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/">WordCamp Asia</a></p>



<p><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/packages/packages-create-block/">create-block package</a></p>



<p><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">learn.wordpress.org</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@wordpress/create-block">create-block documentation</a> on npm</p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/">Gutenberg Times</a></p>



<p>Ryan&#8217;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanWelcherCodes">YouTube</a> and <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/ryanwelchercodes">Twitch</a> channels</p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ryanwelcher/">Ryan&#8217;s Twitter</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 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:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo Joins WordCamp Europe 2023 as Media 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=74926";s: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://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-joins-wordcamp-europe-2023-as-media-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:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:413:"<p>We are proud to join others as a Media Partner for this year's WordCamp Europe. See you in Athens in June. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-joins-wordcamp-europe-2023-as-media-partner/">Do the Woo Joins WordCamp Europe 2023 as Media 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, 26 Apr 2023 12:29:22 +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:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:46:"WPTavern: Ollie Block Theme Now in Public Beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143977";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"https://wptavern.com/ollie-block-theme-now-in-public-beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5758:"<p>WordPress developer Mike McAlister has <a href="https://olliewp.com/introducing-the-ollie-wordpress-block-theme/">launched Ollie</a>, his first block theme, into public beta. McAlister, whose theme company Array Themes was <a href="https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-acquires-array-themes">acquired by WP Engine in 2018</a>, along with the Atomic Blocks plugin, recently departed from his role at the company to pursue other projects.</p>



<p>Ollie supports all the latest Site Editor features, including global styles,&nbsp;patterns,&nbsp;templates,&nbsp;and template parts. It is a beautiful, multipurpose theme of the high caliber one might expect from McAlister, a veteran developer whose past products were well known for their minimalist and clean design.</p>



<img />



<p>Ollie includes an impressive set of more than 50 custom block patterns, making page building a delight. There are page sections for testimonials, company logos, multiple hero designs, pricing tables, various headers and footers, calls to action, and more. Ollie includes six different full-page patterns for the homepage, about, profile, features, pricing, and a download page. They are featured on the theme&#8217;s <a href="https://demo.olliewp.com/patterns/">live demo</a> under the Patterns menu item.</p>







<p>Ollie includes seven style variations, with blue, green, orange, pink, red, and teal accent color palettes in addition to the default. </p>



<p>Like many other block themes, Ollie is speedy, getting top scores on Google’s Pagespeed Insights.</p>



<p>&#8220;One of the most powerful performance features is the selective loading of assets,&#8221; McAlister said. &#8220;Instead of loading a large stylesheet on every page, Ollie only loads the styles needed on the page. This results in a much smaller page size, far less page requests, and an instantly-loading page, which search engines love.&#8221;</p>



<p>After testing Ollie, I found the user experience to be friendly and an accurate representation of one of the taglines for the theme: &#8220;Get a 40 hour head start.&#8221; As soon as users install the theme and click &#8220;Customize,&#8221; they are taken directly to the Site Editor with the front page template pre-populated to match the demo site. This, combined with all the improvements in the Site Editor in WordPress 6.2, creates a smooth editing experience.</p>



<img />



<p>Although it hasn&#8217;t been officially released yet, Ollie could be one of the next majorly successful block themes, with its sheer number of patterns and flexibility for so many different use cases.</p>



<p>Ollie is currently <a href="https://github.com/OllieWP/ollie/">on GitHub</a> during the public beta but McAlister plans to get it approved for WordPress.org after more testing. He is not yet sure whether he will be jumping back into the commercial theme market.</p>



<p>&#8220;With this first block theme, my goal is simply to learn as much as possible about block themes, how users are using them, and what kind of potential there is for a premium offering,&#8221; McAlister told the Tavern. &#8220;This flagship theme will remain as an educational tool and will be free for all to use. Although I have some ideas for monetization, the reality is that we don’t know much about how users will take to block themes or what kind of premium features they’re willing to pay for yet.</p>



<p>&#8220;We’re very early in this new paradigm, so I’m taking the opportunity to ask lots of questions learn about the problems users are facing. What I do know is that any modern commercial WordPress product needs a supreme customer experience and a wealth of quality education to help users navigate all of these new features and drive adoption.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress.org has 286 block themes available and even the best ones have just a few thousand active installs. Building block themes that people will want to use is a new frontier, even for McAlister whose former company was a war-horse in the Classic Themes era.</p>



<p>&#8220;Block themes are going to be a game changer for many different personas of WordPress users,&#8221; McAlister said. &#8220;Being able to customize virtually every aspect of your site is super powerful, but it means that block themes have a lot more moving parts than classic themes. Theme.json, global styles, patterns, templates, template parts — all of these have to be accounted for and they all have to work together seamlessly for an excellent block theme experience.&#8221;</p>



<p> WordPress theme developers are still getting a handle on these changes but the Themes Team is putting a stake in the ground by making block theming the focus of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/04/04/theme-handbook-overhaul-proposal/">Theme Handbook overhaul</a>. Although Classic Themes will still have a chapter in the handbook, the Themes Team has made it clear that block themes are &#8220;the present and future of WordPress.&#8221; </p>



<p>&#8220;Since a lot of the block theme building is done in the editor, it requires a new mastery of the editor that few are intimately familiar with yet,&#8221; McAlister said. &#8220;To build patterns or layouts, you need to know which blocks to use, how to structure them effectively, how to leverage your design system in theme.json, and you need a good design sense to pull it all together. </p>



<p>&#8220;However, when it all finally comes together, block themes provide an unmatched site building and editing experience in comparison to classic themes. I’m very optimistic about the opportunity to revitalize the WordPress theme space, but it’s going to take a lot of work and collective education to get there.&#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:"Wed, 26 Apr 2023 04:20:16 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: CloudFest, WordPress Day and a Hackathon with Carole Olinger";s: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=74912";s: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:60:"https://dothewoo.io/cloudfest-wordpress-day-and-a-hackathon/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:408:"<p>For WordPress and WooCommerce builders, CloudFest might be an option to consider for your conference calendar. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/cloudfest-wordpress-day-and-a-hackathon/">CloudFest, WordPress Day and a Hackathon with Carole Olinger</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, 25 Apr 2023 12:42:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: CertifyWP Launches WordPress Management and Design Credential";s: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=143990";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"https://wptavern.com/certifywp-launches-wordpress-management-and-design-credential";s: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:2781:"<p>CertifyWP has launched its first credentialing exam for a <a href="https://certifywp.com/design-and-development-credential/">WordPress Management and Design Credential</a>. The non-profit organization was founded by Talisha Lewallen with the goals of helping job seekers better demonstrate their skills to potential employers and giving businesses a way to understand prospective employees&#8217; skills.  </p>



<p> The new credential costs $150 for the exam and includes three courses towards mastering frontend development: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><a href="https://certifywp.com/design-and-development-credential/">WordPress Management and Design Credential</a> holders have validated their understanding of important aspects of WordPress and its websites. This credential is designed for anyone who wants to work in the WordPress space or learn to build WordPress websites. Once certified, these individuals are ready to pursue WordPress Web design, e-commerce, JavaScript, databases and other fields.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Many of items under the beginner and intermediate levels of the credential essentially describe a WordPress &#8220;power user,&#8221; or someone who knows their way around the platform and its more advanced features, including skills like navigating the admin panel, hosting, web optimization, and more.</p>



<p>CertifyWP administers a proctored exam for the credential and those who meet the requirements will be required to re-take the exam every three years to maintain their credentialing. The exam will be updated as necessary by CertifyWP&#8217;s advisory board.</p>



<p>There are 110 questions in the exam, spread over three levels, as well as a practical component. The questions must be answered within 60 minutes with 80% for a passing score. Examinees do not have to take CertifyWP&#8217;s course in order to be eligible for the exam &#8211; it&#8217;s open to anyone who wants to take it.</p>



<p>Lewallen is also the owner of WPConnects, a company that helps military veterans get training while they are on active duty and then provides them with mentors and assistance with employment when they leave the military. In a recent WP Tavern Jukebox podcast <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/67-talisha-lewallen-on-how-certifywp-is-hoping-to-offer-wordpress-certification">episode</a> she discussed how this work led to her starting CertifyWP with the help of the WordPress community.</p>



<p>Lewallen will also be speaking at <a href="https://atarim.io/summit/">Atarim&#8217;s Web Agency Summit</a> on April 25, about the importance of credentials in the WordPress workforce, the differences between credentials and certificates, and how credentials can be leveraged in the search for employment.</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, 25 Apr 2023 02:41:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 54: A Bill of Rights for the Open Web";s: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=14836";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/04/episode-54-open-webs-bill-of-rights/";s: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:9087:"<p>Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 54th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she explores the concept of the four freedoms of open source and likens it to today&#8217;s Bill of Rights for the open web.</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/2021/02/wordpress-is-freedom/">Episode 2: WordPress is Free(dom)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt">OpenAI ChatGPT</a> and <a href="https://github.com/features/copilot/">Github Copilot</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/14/wordpress-6-3-planning-proposal-call-for-volunteers/">WordPress 6.3 Planning Proposal &amp; Call for Volunteers</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp.me/p2AvED-qS9">Preparing for the Next Underrepresented Gender-Led Release &#8211; WordPress 6.4</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/">WP20 — Celebrating 20 years of WordPress</a></li>
</ul>



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



<span id="more-14836"></span>



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



<p>I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!</p>



<p>&nbsp;[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] Start of Show</p>



<p>Just over 50 episodes ago, I shared some basic thoughts about the four freedoms of open source. I also talked through the most quoted phrase in open source&nbsp; “free as in free speech, not free as in beer.” And honestly, what podcast about the freedoms of open source would be complete without that? If you haven&#8217;t listened to that episode, I suggest you do, but if you don&#8217;t have time, I&#8217;ll start by reminding us all of the definition of free software, which is most commonly referred to as the four freedoms of open source.</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:12]</p>



<p>So the first thing is the freedom to run the program as you wish for any purpose. The second thing is the freedom to study how the program works and to change it so that it does your computing as you wish. As a side note, access to the source code is a precondition for this.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The third freedom is the freedom to redistribute copies so that you can help others. And the fourth freedom is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this, you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes, and of course, also access to the source code is a precondition for this.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:47]</p>



<p>The TLDR version of these freedoms is, essentially, that users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software. Now, normally when I speak about the freedoms of open source, I&#8217;m talking about it either from a practical or a philosophical standpoint, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about it from a leadership and organizational perspective.</p>



<p>Every once in a while, you might hear me talk about the effects of “open source at scale,” or you might hear Matt say that the four freedoms are essentially the “Bill of Rghts for the open web.” I almost never really dig into either of those topics because it&#8217;s just really complicated. But for starters, anytime you talk about what someone is entitled to or deserves or expects, there is a feeling of political bias.</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:40]</p>



<p>And while I personally believe that creating software is inherently political or, at a minimum, concerned with the needs of people, that&#8217;s not what convinces anyone to participate in open source, and it&#8217;s certainly not what convinces people to use WordPress. But here&#8217;s the thing, as a leader in a widely used, free, and open source software project, as a leader in WordPress, I also know that every new user to our platform or any other open source platform represents a little more freedom in the world.</p>



<p>A little more access to tools and jobs that weren&#8217;t available before. A slightly more open door to networks that undergird the success of entrepreneurs across the globe and a little more equity to the world of democratizing publishing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:28]</p>



<p>When I look at the four freedoms of open source, this Bill of Rights for the Web, I see not only the freedoms that we should have but also the things that we should have freedom from.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We should have the freedom to know how our tools work, the freedom to know what information they need from us, and also the freedom to have some way to make that software work specifically for us because that&#8217;s why we have software because we have humans that need it. But we should also have freedom from having to hide our hacky enhancements or freedom from fear of losing our earned audience, or even the fear of losing access to copious amounts of content that we have created ourselves over the years.</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:13]</p>



<p>And honestly, the things that we should be free from just include a lot of fear of loss. Loss of opportunity or relevance or livelihood. And I feel like for our project, and maybe for open source as a whole, we&#8217;re encountering a lot of that right now, whether we are aware of it or not. We&#8217;re seeing advancements like GPT3 or ChatGPT if that sounds more familiar and co-pilot.</p>



<p>And while it&#8217;s not quite in the same vein, also things like Gutenberg. Advancements that are coming to technology around us, technology we&#8217;re familiar with. And it&#8217;s hard to see what&#8217;s in them sometimes. It&#8217;s hard to see what drives them. It&#8217;s hard to know how we can make them work for us. So I have to remind us all, as citizens of an open source community, that what protects us from those things we should be free from is directly connected to how active we are in the things we are free to.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We hear that in a slightly more routine way from folks around open source communities. Basically, the whole concept of open source software is being built by the folks who show up. You can&#8217;t influence the future of anything if you&#8217;re not showing up in the spaces where the influence happens.</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:35]</p>



<p>So be an active participant in these new technologies. Learn how GPT works and how it could work for you, even if it&#8217;s just writing better prompts. Learn how Gutenberg can support your needs, not subvert your needs, even if it&#8217;s just learning how to arrange a series of blocks into a pattern or patterns into a page.</p>



<p>But as with all fast-moving technological advances, I encourage you to leap in feet first, not head first. Get in up to your neck in the &#8220;why&#8221;s and &#8220;how&#8221;s of that new technology you&#8217;ve been worrying about. Be the first to become best at this arcane new thing because that&#8217;s why we open source at all so that you have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve your software.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:33] Small List of Big Things</p>



<p>That brings me now to my small list of big things. It&#8217;s a very small list, but it is very big, as always. The first thing is that we are gearing up for the remaining major releases of the year, WP 6.3 and 6.4 in an atypical moment for our project. You can volunteer for both simultaneously if you want, and hopefully, you do want.</p>



<p>Second thing is that there are many ways to celebrate WordPress&#8217;s 20th anniversary on May 27th. But one of the things you can do right now is record a short video or sound clip about a great memory or experience you have had in this community or just generally because of WordPress. Those will be featured on the WP 20 website, and maybe even a lucky few will make it into the second volume of the WordPress history book.</p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks 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.&nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:55:06 +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:15:"Chloe Bringmann";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #82 – Gutenberg 15.6 and proposed schedule for WordPress 6.3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=23907";s: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://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-82-gutenberg-15-6-and-proposed-schedule-for-wordpress-6-3/";s: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:39241:"<p>Nick Diego and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss the most recent Gutenberg plugin release 15.6, the proposed schedule for WordPress 6.3 release in August of this year and a few things that are in the works. </p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-82-gutenberg-15-6-and-proposed-schedule-for-wordpress-6-3/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<ul>
<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox">Homer Gaines</a></li>



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



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



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest: Nick Diego</h2>



<ul>
<li>Follow on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/nickmdiego">@nickmdiego</a></li>



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/14/wordpress-6-3-planning-proposal-call-for-volunteers/">WordPress 6.3 Planning Proposal &amp; Call for Volunteers</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>
</ul>



<ul>
<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/test/2023/04/17/fse-program-testing-call-21-front-page-fun/">FSE Program Testing Call #21: Front Page Fun</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/using-template-patterns-to-build-multiple-homepage-designs/"><strong>Using template patterns to build multiple homepage designs</strong></a> (Dev Blog) </li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Community Contributions</h2>



<p><strong>GiveWP:</strong> <a href="https://givewp.com/visual-donation-form-builder-beta/"><strong>Visual Donation Form Builder in Beta</strong></a></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bring me your Issues with Ryan Welcher</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aut0EcsKbxM&t=6s">Bring me your Issues #1</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2SYJhh3PGs">Bring me your Issues #2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qalDqYnFRA&t=856s">Bring me your Issues #3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/tooling-using-create-block-scaffolding-and-3rd-party-templates/">Tooling: Using Create-Block Scaffolding and 3rd Party Templates</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 15.6</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.6? (19 April)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-6-introduces-experimental-details-block-and-command-center-for-site-editor">Gutenberg 15.6 Introduces Experimental Details Block and Command Center for Site Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/intrinsic-design-theming-and-rethinking-how-to-design-with-wordpress/">Intrinsic design, theming, and rethinking how to design with WordPress</a> (Dev Blog)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/nickmdiego/status/1649055649542856704">Nick Diego&#8217;s Video on Twitter on Spacing for the Spacer block.</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49607#top">WIP &#8211; Add a UI to allow saving patterns 🚧</a>#49607</li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48458#top">The wp:pattern block</a>#48458</li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49912#top">Experimental: Global styles revisions</a>#49912 (alternative to #<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/46667">46667</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/49601#top">Editor: expose revisions in the UI for all available post types</a>#49601</li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/15682">Blocks: Provide a general solution to customize the list of allowed blocks for inner blocks with block attributes</a>&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p></p>



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



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



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



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



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



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



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 82nd episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about the Gutenberg plugin version 15.6, the proposed schedule for WordPress 6.3, and a few things that are in the works again. I&#8217;m your host Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and full-time core contributor for the WordPress Open Source Project. I&#8217;m thrilled to have with me today, co-host Nick Diego, plugin developer, core contributor as well, and we are both part of Automattic’s Five for the Future project. Nick and I teamed up to manage the Gutenberg plugin release 15.6, so this is fresh from the press, so to speak. Thanks for joining me today again at the Gutenberg Changelog. Nick, how are you today?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: I&#8217;m doing great. I&#8217;m very excited that 15.6 is out in the wild now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, me too. And this is a daily dose of Nick Diego for me because the last two days we were in communication about the release.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>But before we head into the Gutenberg 15.6 release, let&#8217;s do a few announcements from the WordPress project. As mentioned in the intro, the release schedule for WordPress 6.3 proposal is published and includes a call for volunteers for the release squad. A beta is proposed to be, beta one, is proposed to be on June 27th, 2023. So it&#8217;s after WordCamp and “after after” WordCamp, so to speak, WordCamp Europe. Release candidate and dev notes. Deadline is proposed for July 18th, 2023, and then the final release is proposed to be scheduled on August 8th, 2023. So you raised your hand right, Nick? I raised my hand.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: I did. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So yeah, I&#8217;ve been in the editor triage lead for the last three-year releases and it was a new role when I started. I&#8217;d love to help somebody grow into that role because I love doing it, but we want to see other people in that role as well. And I think it&#8217;s a fun role. It&#8217;s pretty unique. Yeah, it&#8217;s not very technical. It&#8217;s more organizational and just engaging with other release leads and kind of keeping everything moving smoothly. So it&#8217;s a great lead for somebody who maybe is not as technical but wants to really engage with the release.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah, I want to change my role. The last three releases, I did documentation pieces and especially the Gutenberg dev notes wrangle them through GitHub and that is definitely something that somebody that is not technical can do as well. I&#8217;m open to mentor somebody for 6.3 and the proposal for the schedule comes actually on the heels of Josepha Haden Chomphosy’s post, which preparing for the next women and non-binary release squad, AKA underrepresented gender squad.</p>



<p>And if you want to be part of it, you can raise your hands in the comments there. And of course we have the links and show notes, but if you haven&#8217;t worked on the major WordPress release squad before, it would be really good and you want to be part of the underrepresented gender squad, it would be good that you also look at the schedule for 6.3 and raise your hand there because quite a few mentors would be available to skill up contributors to be part of 6.4 because that&#8217;s how you get new people in that you need to&#8230; We need to shepherd them through the responsibilities and how things work and who to talk to and how this all&#8230; It can be very intimidating when you haven&#8217;t done this before.</p>



<p>So not to throw you into the deep end of the water to swim.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: It&#8217;s always good to see how the sausage is made and there&#8217;s so much going on and so many people involved. I know when I first did it, I was very intimidated, but after you see it once, it starts to make a bit more sense. So yeah, mentor for 6.3 and then get really well-prepared for 6.4.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah. And if you want to learn more, yeah, you find us on Twitter or on the WordPress Slack and you can just kind of DM us or ask us some questions there. Well, I volunteered you now. Big sorry.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah. Oh, if anybody has any questions about the release, feel free to reach out to us. We&#8217;re here to help, here to get more people on board with the release. I know for myself, it kind of kicked off my journey in contributing more to WordPress and it really made me kind of fall in love with the process. And so I highly encourage anybody else who might be even a little bit interested to start exploring it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And if you want to help the quality race on some of the products, you can also follow the FSE outreach program that has been in place for two and a half years almost. And there is, Anne McCarthy runs the program and you still have until April 26th to follow the testing call number 20. And that is using the create block theme plugin to create a block theme and you get some instructions on the call for testing. It&#8217;s another six days, but if you are not so much into theme development, maybe you want to do the new call for testing that just came out and have some front page fun with a block scene and create some templates that are for the front page. And there is actually also a developer news blog out, blog post out that just came out last week, and that is by Justin Tadlock using the template patterns to build multiple homepage designs. So I don&#8217;t know exactly if they&#8217;re related, but I&#8217;m pointing you to it as well, so you get a little bit broader picture of it. Yes.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: And I want to stress that these call for testings, even if you&#8217;ve been building with blocks forever and you&#8217;re very engaged, it&#8217;s a great exercise to go through. I consider myself very entrenched in WordPress and know what&#8217;s going on, but sometimes when you go through these testing calls, you find pitfalls or issues that somebody who&#8217;s maybe brand new to blocks would encounter. It&#8217;s a great way to find problems or things that can be fixed to make that onboarding experience smoother. So I know I always find things that I don&#8217;t expect, but the goal of these call for testing is to make WordPress better. And so even if you use WordPress every day, I encourage you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point. Absolutely. And if I want to get something done on my theme, for instance, for the Gutenberg Times or for my personal blog and try to do this, I always find something that might be a little quirky, that might be a little bit, oh, I haven&#8217;t thought about that, but now that I use it, maybe there are some things that could be easier to handle or more intuitive or I run into some problems.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s so fresh from out of the releases that there&#8217;s always&#8230; There is no bug free software. That ship has sailed when we so many people are involved. All right.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. But that&#8217;s also something if I get asked, I want to contribute to WordPress, but I don&#8217;t know how. So I&#8217;ll appoint them to the testing calls because it&#8217;s gets them hands-on with the WordPress site and also contribute back by just giving feedback. You don&#8217;t have to know the processes. You don&#8217;t need to know any development, but when something doesn&#8217;t work right and you can raise your hand and say, I found something and explain that to other people. And Anne has been very good in creating GitHub issues for the developers and to feed that back into the development process.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Absolutely.</p>



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



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: For the community contribution, I wanted to point out Ryan Welcher started a new series on his Twitch stream and it&#8217;s called Bring Me Your Issues. And he uploaded the first of the few issues for persistence on YouTube, and I wanted to point you to it. He also went through the work and added chapter timestamps to it, and especially for the first one that was really helpful because that&#8217;s a two and a half hour Twitch session. I really admire his persistence and his patience.</p>



<p>So you can look through the list of the topics that he covered and one of them&#8230; So I can only say three things, but that it was more so how to use the create block scaffolding tool. It&#8217;s always interesting to see that and how to build an edit block for the lockdown user. So edit post block I should say. And that&#8217;s certainly something that could come to core, but if it&#8217;s easier&#8230; Yeah, relatively easy to build, you can build it yourself. Then he answers the question, what and why inner blocks, which is a component that is for block building. And then another question is how to create a placeholder and parent and child relationships for your block development and using the example of a post pickup block. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: It&#8217;s a goldmine of tools and how to do different things, so if you haven&#8217;t checked out Ryan&#8217;s streams, you definitely should.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, and there&#8217;s a second edition of it, where you can learn more about the get post type selectors in the data store and the use entity records, all technical terms, that you will know so easy after you listen to that. The render appender, I like that. The render appender on the inner box. And then in the third edition here, Ryan also talks a little bit over the Gutenberg 15.5 release and how to create a external template for APIs for the great block scaffolding tool. Always a good thing to know so you can create your own templates for the tool. There was actually also a topic at one of our Gutenberg live Q&amp;As was Grzegorz Ziolkowski and Fabian Kagy. It&#8217;s a couple of years old, but it&#8217;s still very, very current with demos and additional background on how to create those templates. So we share all this in the show notes. I know it&#8217;s a little bit tech and developer happy, heavy, happy too, but I just wanted to point out these new resources and additional resources.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So GiveWP published a block-based visual donation form builder. That&#8217;s a mouthful, and it&#8217;s in beta. So GiveWP has, in an earlier episode, we discussed GiveWP&#8217;s way to rebuild the powerful donation plugin with our block first mindset and starting off with a WordPress native components and scripts to build the interface and only use custom code to augment it. And the visual donation form builder, it&#8217;s getting better, is the first product that comes from this effort. And if you work for an agency that helps nonprofits fundraise using the GiveWP Plugin, this beta is definitely for you. It&#8217;s also for you when you are working at a nonprofit organization and you are responsible for the fundraising and creating the campaign-related forms. This is also a beta for you. So it gives you early insight in what&#8217;s coming to GiveWP in the version 3.0. And it also gives you a better feel for what will be possible with a new form builder that isn&#8217;t available right now. So check it out, GiveWP. We have the link definitely in the show notes to the beta announcement, and that&#8217;s it from our community contributions.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Lots of good stuff.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 15.6</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So what&#8217;s released this week? We have Gutenberg 15.6 and we are coming right from it. It was released yesterday and the release post is also available now. It includes a total of 112 PRs. It&#8217;s a smaller release in comparison to the ones that come closer to a major WordPress release. It was authored by 45 contributors and seven of which were new contributors. So congratulations everyone on the good work and let&#8217;s get into what&#8217;s in there. And we&#8217;re starting out with, we now have spacing presets to the spacer block.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, this is what I&#8217;m so excited about. We&#8217;ve had&#8230; Since 6.1, presets were added to WordPress, which allow you to do a little slider for margin and padding and block app. It&#8217;s configuring margin or padding can be kind of complicated, but when you have a preset of small, medium, large or 1-2-3-4-5, it just makes it a little bit easier for the user. And the way that you could apply those, is you could actually make them fluid, using clamp to make them fluid, which allows for really interesting designs that don&#8217;t require media queries because you can make all your one margin for desktop, another for mobile. We didn&#8217;t have that for the spacer block, which adds vertical height between different blocks. So if you had a hundred pixel spacer block, you wanted it to be smaller on mobile, you would need to use custom CSS.</p>



<p>Well, now spacing presets come to the spacer block, which also in turn allows for fluid spacer blocks, which people have been asking for forever. Because the spacer block is such a natural tool. It&#8217;s so easy to add for end users. It makes sense. I want to add some space between these two items. Okay, add the spacer block, but now that they&#8217;re fluid&#8230; Now that you can make them fluid, it allows for dynamic websites where you have one size on desktop, another for tablet and another for mobile. And it&#8217;s all on this fluid spectrum and you don&#8217;t need media queries. You don&#8217;t need anything else. You&#8217;re just using these spacing presets. So I couldn&#8217;t be more excited. I&#8217;ve only have just began exploring this and I know other theme developers are as well, so exciting stuff.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for telling us about it. I also want to point out a blog post that&#8217;s on the developer blog and it kind of talks about that fluid part of intrinsic design versus media queries for theming and thinking about how designing WordPress makes it a little bit more modern when you&#8230; Because the proliferation of screen sizes, you are probably not very content with just three media or three sets. You might need 12 sets or 6 sets, and who keeps track of all the different settings for all these presets? Intrinsic design, that&#8217;s a fluid typography. That&#8217;s a fluid spacing. It&#8217;s definitely a way to go.</p>



<p>It doesn&#8217;t say that you cannot have any media queries, but it&#8217;s definitely for the strategic way to build websites. It&#8217;s the way to go now.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Definitely.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And then we had, the cover block had border support, but now you also have these pop over resizable box and I think it also was in 15.5, but cover block has now a great border support. You can have the radios. You can have the colors. You can have the resizable block kind of&#8230; Resizable blocks adhered to those. Yeah, that was really nice when I tested it. I&#8217;m not quite sure that&#8217;s 5.6 native, but it&#8217;s definitely improved with 15.6</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: In 16.1, we did a huge effort to add all these design tools to most blocks, but border was left off a handful of them. One of them being cover block because of the clipping so if you did a background image and you tried to put border radius on it, you&#8217;d need to use overflow. It just became tricky with CSS and it took some more time to figure out how to implement that correctly. And so we finally got there and I think that this has been one of those things, why isn&#8217;t there border control? I thought, well, it was a little more tricky than we expected. So it&#8217;s nice to see it here and it really opens up a lot of designs and again, removes some extra custom CSS that you may have needed in the past to achieve a specific design.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So next thing on the list of change of was, add styles section to the&#8230; Well, they call it browse mode sidebar, but it&#8217;s the style editor of the style. Well, somebody called it site editor dark side as well, so which I don&#8217;t feel slightly better. It&#8217;s the left sidebar that is on the site editor. And now there is a style section where you can see all the styles that come with the theme, the style variations, and when you click on it, you see how your site changes, but there&#8217;s also an edit button there. So you can then go and open up the right side and change some of the settings for the style variation. And that is a very fluid workflow. I really love that. And it&#8217;s now in the Gutenberg plugin, so it&#8217;s really cool.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Before you had to know where the style variations were. You had to click into the template, then go to the style panel. And so this just makes it much more surfaced for users, allowing you to easily switch your style variation out. Great improvement, and also that name to be determined left-hand sidebar. That will get more features as we go on as well. But this is one additional addition beyond templates and template parts and navigation.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Those are the four main items right now. Yeah, navigation, global styles, template and template parts. And there might be a pattern in the future.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Hopefully.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hopefully. Yes, yes, yes. And then in Gutenberg 15.6, there&#8217;s also two experiments. One is a new block that the details and summary block, which mostly was working by Carolina Nymark and she did a fantastic job, shepherding that for maybe a year until it actually got merged as an experiment into the plugin. It&#8217;s how you can hide things. You write a movie review and you want to hide the spoiler part where you reveal some of the drama in the movie, but you want your users to know or readers to know that you making a choice here. You open it up and it&#8217;s a spoiler. You can also hide some details on certain things. There are numerous of use cases and it&#8217;s quite nice because it has all the design tools. It has the typography. It has the spacing. It has the backgrounds, the colors. So it&#8217;s actually a nice little block and it can use some testing, but you need to go to the menu of the Gutenberg plugin into the experiments and check it on. Yeah. Have you used it Nick?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, I played around with it quite a bit. I think that the colloquial term would be an accordion, is basically kind of what we&#8217;re talking about here. It&#8217;s really hard to do in an accessible way, which is one of the reasons why this has taken so long to get into WordPress. Core, that is. And so I think Carolina did a great job. The current experimental implementation includes a number of a parent block and then a number of child blocks. There&#8217;s another exploration that&#8217;s maybe trying to simplify that. But either way, we&#8217;re getting closer and closer to having this block and core and it&#8217;s something that everybody&#8217;s asked for. So why isn&#8217;t this in core? We want this in core. So it&#8217;s, it will get there and I think this is a great first step. Encourage everybody to try out the experiment. Find problems with it. Find out how we can make it better.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Excellent. And then there&#8217;s another experiment. It&#8217;s called a command center for the site editor. And that is really a rough interface right now if you switch it on. Yeah, don&#8217;t expect too much user-friendliness in there because it&#8217;s still in an experimental way. So if I understood this correctly, you get a little search bar like the spotlight on a Mac or so, and then you can say edit something or change color or so and it will get you to the place where you can actually do that. So you wouldn&#8217;t need to know all the 15 levels of menus to get to a certain place. I have not played with it. Did you test it a bit?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yes, so we&#8217;ve been all hearing about artificial intelligence these days. AI is everywhere, and this is not AI, but it&#8217;s an experiment to start exploring one, how you can move things around. How you can move around the site. You could tell it, I want to add a new page, but you can also start to see where in the future you could hook in&#8230; third-party extenders could hook in a different additional functionality into this command center to do, write me a post about Mars, whatever. You can start to think about where this could eventually go, which is why this is currently an experiment, but the baseline is going to be take me to the styles panel, add a new page, simple things. But it could be huge. It could be a really important component of what WordPress is. And so really test it out, start exploring it. The idea behind it is it&#8217;s going to be very extensible, so you can add additional functionality as a third-party extender. So really excited to see where this goes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, me too. And then there are quite a few, I call them or we call them here, quality of life kind of enhancements you don&#8217;t know that you need it until you see that what you get. And one of them is the smoother animations for the drop zone and what is a drop zone? It&#8217;s not a movie thing. You go from drag and drop and to drop, you need to know where you it’s is actually going on your canvas and the animation that&#8230; So there&#8217;s a blue line appearing on your canvas and it tells you, okay, your drop thingy will drop here when you release the button if you wanted to. And the animations are much smoother. It&#8217;s actually a delightful experience now to drag and drop blocks from one section to the other or from the list view over&#8230; From the list view over to your canvas. So that&#8217;s a very nice addition there.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s really nice. And then there&#8217;s some improvements to list view itself around dragging. I&#8217;ve run into it too. You see sometimes you drag items within the list view and it’s&#8230; Things don&#8217;t go exactly where you want them to. And one of those was dragging underneath a container like a group block was a little challenging. And then they&#8217;ve improved that as well. So dragging and dropping and got it much easier across the board.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, and that I think were all the highlights that we wanted to point out today from the Gutenberg 15.6 release. We will have the release post in the show notes so you can follow up on things.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What’s in Active Development or Discussed</strong></h3>



<p>And now we want to talk to you about what&#8217;s in active development and what&#8217;s coming down the line. And first off is the work with patterns. So I hear this over and over again. I want to create my own patterns. Why can&#8217;t I do this with WordPress? I need a plugin. And we know all the good plugins. There&#8217;s a, Justin Tadlock had a plugin to create patterns and Block Meister was one, and then WP Engine came out with a pattern builder. And so Ari has a work in progress to add UI to allow saving patterns. And we definitely share that and it&#8217;s coming along fine, but it&#8217;s still a work in progress. And I don&#8217;t know what are the problems they&#8217;re hitting? Do you have a feeling on how that&#8217;s difficult?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Well, I think it&#8217;s one of those things where we have all sorts of different entities in the block editor. We have reusable blocks. We have templates. We have template parts. What do you use when? What do you use where? And so I think that not only the functionality of being able to save a pattern, but also the UI around saving a pattern and making it clear to users when you should use one over the other and in what context things should be used. So there&#8217;s a technical issue and then there&#8217;s also a UI understanding user experience issue as well. So it&#8217;s getting there. It&#8217;s great to see this happening in core patterns are such a great way to create content and then use it in different places. And being able to do that in core would be such a huge benefit. It would allow you to design something, save it as a pattern, go to a different page, use your pattern. There&#8217;s just so many delightful applications of this and really excited to see it moving forward.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it definitely needs to be in there. And there&#8217;s also a work done on the WP pattern block, which allows you to create patterns or use patterns in template parts. So that&#8217;s also reusable designs that are already available to use them in templates, so you can reuse, have them on every type of page that you want to be on. That is also in the works. It definitely comes together with the UI for the patterns as well. So look out, we have the links for the PRs, will be in the show notes, so if you want to check it out and keep a tab on it, feel free to do those.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, and I think that the long and short of it is patterns are under the hood a very simple thing. It&#8217;s just a collection of blocks. And the initial implementation of patterns was just that. It was a collection of blocks that you could deploy in different places. Now that people are starting to expand and adopt block-based WordPress, it&#8217;s become very clear how powerful patterns can be. And now we&#8217;re seeing all these like, well, can it do this? Can it do this? Can we do it here? Yeah. And so we&#8217;re trying to address those things.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I just want to&#8230; Just had the idea, we talked about pattern before and I pitched that developer news post where you can have patterns for particular templates, and that&#8217;s also part of that idea where you can expand. How you can use it. How can theme developers support users in creating what they need to create on their websites and be fast with that? Yeah. So that&#8217;s also part, yeah.</p>



<p>Another thing that was definitely had a lot of questions and a lot of requests was getting revisions on the global styles for the interface. So contributors look to implement revisions and display them in the global styles. There&#8217;s current and experimental implementation that shows a separate revision menu item in the global styles. And when you selected, you can see the latest revisions, the preview of them in the editor, and you can also go back to the latest revision and change it again. Or there is also a restore of unsafe changes and also a reset to the science of the theme. So there was, the design team did lot of thinking about how that can be displayed. And now developers are working on some iterations on the PR before it&#8217;s merged. And it will certainly need some thorough testing, but I wanted listeners to know that that is coming as well.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, revisions are such a big thing when you make those changes in the site editor can be a little discerning because you&#8217;re like, I&#8217;m making all these changes. How do I get back? How do I get back to a design that I liked before and it was clicking the back button a million times or just a little&#8230; It was tough. So there&#8217;s a revision, especially visual revisions where you can go back and see what the changes that were made I think is going to be really important for broader adoption of the site editor. So great to see.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, definitely. And when users do make their own designs or make changes on their design, sometimes they don&#8217;t know what the final design looks like until they actually have it and then they don&#8217;t like it anymore and then they need to go back and that these revisions definitely will help with that process. I&#8217;m that way. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And the last item that I have in the list for, or we have in the list for you to learn that is discussed and in the works is again, a little bit more developer oriented, but now there is a PR one issue discussed on how to get allowed blocks into the blockchain meta. It is an attribute for the inner block. So if you have a custom block and you want other blocks in there, you can restrict which blocks can be put in there, but you are not able to add this to your&#8230; A data point to your outside block. And that is something especially for developers that restrict them or they find solutions around it. And if you&#8230; Yeah, one is if you want to restrict an instance of the media and text block, that it only can do heading, paragraph, and image, but you can tell the media and text block that is what you want them to put in there. So developers do all kinds of interesting things to work around this, but there should be a standard in core and the developers are working on it.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, I&#8217;d love to see this extensibility. When the block editor is being built, obviously, you need the core components to be built, but I think we&#8217;re finally out of time where a lot of things are stable and now is really how do we allow people to make changes, extend different components. One of the beauties of WordPress. You can change anything. You can configure it in many ways and getting some of that configurability into more configurability into the block editor is great. So these little things that may seem minor have huge impacts for developers&#8217; lives and what they&#8217;re trying to implement. So great to see this happening.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I was thinking about, well, this is an issue that&#8217;s discussed for four years now. And finally there are enough use cases, there have been enough ways to use the block editor and extend an editor, and now there&#8217;s a real need there to actually have that discussion come to fruition into a PR or into a new feature that helps the developers to extend things. And I think we will see through the year of 2023, the next two major WordPress releases, certainly additional things that add more extensibility to the block editor, especially to the site editor and to custom blocks. And it&#8217;s exciting times and I&#8217;m really glad that we are there now just before the next phase of Gutenberg.</p>



<p>Yeah, absolutely. And with that, dear listeners, we are at the end of the show. It was a shorter show, but I&#8217;m glad I had Nick with me for you and could talk to you about a few things that are beyond the Gutenberg plugin release.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So before the end of the show. I remind you if you want to help WordPress get better, heed the call for testing, either building a block theme with a block plugin in the 20th testing call or rating front pages, different kind of front page for your website. So anything else that you want to add to things that we haven&#8217;t talked about that you were top of your mind?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: No, just encourage people to go check out 15.6 and that call for testing. Embrace blocks and try to push the block editor to his limits. And if there are issues, let us know and we&#8217;ll help make it better.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right, so you changed jobs, Nick? Have anything but you are not new to our listeners. That&#8217;s why we kind of cut through the introduction a little bit. But have anything&#8230; If people want to get in touch with you, has anything changed?</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Nope. The best place usually is just on Twitter or obviously WordPress Slack at NDiego. On Twitter, NickMDiego. So feel free to reach out to me with your questions, comments, suggestions about WordPress. Here to help.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And we have a new video of you, Fluid Spaces.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Yeah, I&#8217;m going to make more of those. I&#8217;m going to be trying to do more little shorts about different features that come out in WordPress so we&#8217;ll see how that goes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And the first one is out today and we will have the link in the show notes and it talks about the spacers, spacer block. And so let Nick know what you think about and what your ideas are for new little shorts.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As always, the show notes will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is the 82nd edition or episode. And if you have questions or suggestions or news you want to send, include them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@Gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@Gutenbergtimes.com</a>. Thank you everybody, and I wish you a great weekend and a new weekend of spring eternal. Hopefully, and the weather getting better and talk to you in two weeks. Bye-bye.</p>



<p><em>Nick Diego</em>: Bye-bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 22 Apr 2023 21:15:05 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Gutenberg Changelog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"WPTavern: Virtuozzo Launches Version 2.0 of Its Application Platform for WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143923";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"https://wptavern.com/virtuozzo-launches-version-2-0-of-its-application-platform-for-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:2573:"<p>Virtuozzo, the software company behind the virtualization and cloud management capabilities of many popular hosting service providers, has launched <a href="https://www.virtuozzo.com/company/blog/wordpress-as-a-service-the-new-kind/">version 2.0</a> of its <a href="https://virtuozzo.com/application-platform-for-wordpress/">WordPress platform</a>. The company&#8217;s 450+ customers include GoDaddy, IONOS, InMotion hosting, and other hosts.</p>



<p>Virtuozzo&#8217;s WordPress platform  enables service providers to sell containerized hosting as a service. The most recent update introduces a new user interface designed for WordPress customers that makes it easy to configure resources, adjust scaling, pay invoices, and deploy WordPress websites.</p>



<img />



<p>Version 2.0 of the <a href="https://virtuozzo.com/application-platform-for-wordpress/">Virtuozzo Application Platform for WordPress</a> includes automatic scaling up or down in response to traffic spikes, the ability to offer consumption-based pricing, automated WordPress deployment for single instances to multi-region clusters, and efficient hardware utilization with fully isolated containers and automatic failover. </p>



<p>The new platform makes it possible for any hosting provider to offer some of the same features that more expensive managed hosts provide. Virtuozzo pioneered the platform with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.azpocket.co.jp/" target="_blank">AzPocket</a>, a Japanese WordPress host, as the first adopter, who used it to expand the features of its shared hosting offerings.</p>



<p>“There is a significant gap in the WordPress hosting market, between cheap shared or VPS hosting services, and more expensive managed WordPress from companies such as WP Engine and Kinsta,&#8221; Virtuozzo VP of Strategic Product Development Carlos Rego said. &#8220;Our solution enables any service provider to offer modern, containerized WordPress-as-a-Service at a fraction of the cost of those ‘premium’ providers.” </p>



<p>Virtuozzo will be hosting a webinar on <a href="https://www.virtuozzo.com/sell-wordpress-as-a-service-brand-new-ux/">how to sell premium WordPress hosting</a> on May 4, 2023, at 11AM EDT/ 5PM CET. Planned topics include the opportunity for hosting in the WordPress market, the drawbacks of current hosting products, and how to create a &#8220;WordPress as a Service business in a box.&#8221; Virtuozzo representatives will demo the new WordPress platform and answer questions from attendees at the conclusion of 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:"Sat, 22 Apr 2023 16:13:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"Gutenberg Times: Custom CSS, front page fun, Gutenberg outside of WordPress – Weekend Edition #251";s: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=23915";s: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://gutenbergtimes.com/custom-css-front-page-fun-gutenberg-outside-of-wordpress-weekend-edition-251/";s: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:15293:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Although, I found great content for you  and I was co-leading the Gutenberg plugin release, it felt like a quiet week. No family drama, no moving stress. Nowadays, I cherish the quiet moments, when I can sit and read a book, that&#8217;s not technical in nature. Or just sit with loved once and chat about life, or go for a walk along the Rhine. Or take a stroll through Tinguely Museum. What are your moments of quiet, you cherish, and you don&#8217;t have enough of? </p>



<a href="https://www.tinguely.ch/en.html"><img /></a><a href="https://www.tinguely.ch/en.html">Méta-Harmonie II &#8211; Tinguely Museum</a>



<p>This will all change again next week, I am confident. 🤷🏻‍♀️</p>



<p>How was your week? </p>



<p>Hopefully, you can take a quiet moment for reading through this newsletter. Enjoy</p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




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



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></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>This week, <strong>Gutenberg 15.6</strong> was released. Nick Diego and I were leading the release and published the release post: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 15.6? (19 April)</strong></a>. We highlighted </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#details-block-experimental">Details block, experimental</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#spacer-block-gets-spacing-presets">Spacer Block gets spacing presets</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#style-variations-in-browse-mode">Style variations in browse mode</a></li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> also reported <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-6-introduces-experimental-details-block-and-command-center-for-site-editor"><strong>Gutenberg 15.6 Introduces Experimental Details Block and Command Center for Site Editor</strong></a>. </p>



<p><strong>Nick Diego </strong>and I also recorded the <strong>Gutenberg Changelog episode 82</strong> together and discussed not only the latest release but also what&#8217;s in the works, like revisions for Global Styles, or a Pattern creator. It was a great pleasure speaking with Nick again on the podcast. The episode 82 will arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>



<img /><strong>&#8220;Daily doses Nick Diego&#8221;</strong>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<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>A new call for testing is available for you! In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/17/fse-program-testing-call-21-front-page-fun/"><strong>FSE Program Testing Call #21: Front Page Fun</strong></a>, <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> invites you to create and modify the front page of a site utilizing patterns that are available on a pre-built site, thanks to the <a href="https://instawp.com/">InstaWP </a>service. Share your experience on the post by May 8th, 2023. </p>



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



<p><strong>Wes Theron</strong> posted a video on <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/04/18/building-a-page-with-only-patterns/"><strong>Building a page with only&nbsp;patterns</strong></a>. In this demo, he used a variety of patterns to create a Services Page. Patterns allow you to add beautifully designed, ready-to-go layouts to any WordPress site with a simple insert or copy/paste.</p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jasontheadams">Jason Adams,</a></strong> announced <strong>GiveWP&#8217;S  Block based: </strong><a href="https://givewp.com/visual-donation-form-builder-beta/"><strong>Visual Donation Form Builder in Beta</strong></a>. We discussed in an earlier edition that GiveWP is rebuilding their powerful Donation plugin with a block first mindset. The revamp started off with the WordPress own components and scripts to build the interface, and the GiveWP team augmented it with custom code where necessary. &nbsp;The Visual donation Form Builder is the first product to come from this effort.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paRW3BWsdgw">More info is also available on YouTube</a></p>



<p>If you work at an agency that helps their nonprofits fundraise using the GiveWP plugin, this beta test is for you. Furthermore, if you work at a nonprofit organization and are responsible for fundraising and building campaign related forms for your website, this beta test is for you. It gives you an early insight into what coming to GiveWP with its 3.0 version, and also a better feel for what will be possible with the new form builder that isn’t available right now.&nbsp;</p>



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<p><strong>Munir Kamal</strong> released his <a href="https://shop.gutenberghub.com/ai-writer/"><strong>AI Writer on Gutenberg Hub Shop</strong></a> &#8211;  plugin that integrates ChatGPT into the Gutenberg canvas. Your writing prompt is return with content, and then you can also ask for some rewrites, translate into various languages. You would need an OpenAI API key to enable the plugin, after you paid and installed the plugin. </p>



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<p><strong>Alexandra Yap,</strong> Stackable wrote a tutorial on <a href="https://wpstackable.com/blog/how-to-use-countdown-timers-for-marketing-campaigns/"><strong>How to Use Countdown Timers for Marketing Campaigns</strong></a>. &#8220;Countdown timers in web design are digital timers that display the remaining time until a particular event or deadline. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can use countdown timers to boost your marketing campaigns.&#8221; she wrote. Congratulations to <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/bfintal">Benjamin Intal </a></strong>and his team to passing the milestone of 80,000 active installations of their plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/stackable-ultimate-gutenberg-blocks/">Stackable</a>. </p>



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<p>There are now <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">282 Block Themes in the WordPress repository</a>.</strong> Here are three you could test. </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/abisko/">Abisko</a> by Anders Noren, also <a href="https://wptavern.com/anders-noren-releases-abisko-a-new-free-wordpress-theme-with-30-block-patterns">mentioned on WPTavern</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/spectra-one/">Spectra One </a>by Brainstorm Force, developers also of the classic Astra theme, also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNIeW9QQIc4">reviewed by Jamie Marsland, PootlePress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/ctlg/">CTLG</a> by Automattic, specifically designed for creating lists, directories, and catalogs</li>
</ul>



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



<p>What&#8217;s the difference between a block theme and a classic theme? <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> explains it in a few minutes in this video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ1kruAnQso&t=1s"><strong>WordPress Block Themes vs Classic Themes: A Beginners Guide</strong></a></p>



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



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> wrote tutorial on how to work with <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/per-block-css-with-theme-json/"><strong>Per-block CSS with theme.json</strong></a>. &#8220;<code>theme.json</code> supports enough CSS features to cover most common styles. But it cannot reasonably cover every scenario and still have a matching design tool in the editor UI, which is an important consideration. If the interface covered every possibility, the user experience would suffer.&#8221; Tadlock wrote. He also answers the question, why not add everything to a style.css and be done with it. Learn how to add custom CSS per block. Tadlock also added a few thoughts on pitfalls, and has some tips and tricks for you. </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>




<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p><strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> talked to <strong>Steve Brunner</strong> and <strong>Timothy Jacobs</strong>,  both founders of a SaaS app called&nbsp;<a href="https://engineawesome.com/">Engine Awesome</a> in the latest WP Jukebox podcast: <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/72-steve-bruner-and-timothy-jacobs-on-using-gutenberg-outside-of-wordpress"><strong>#72 – Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs on Using Gutenberg Outside of WordPress</strong></a>. They discussed Gutenberg, but not how you might expect. It’s Gutenberg outside of WordPress, but Gutenberg nonetheless.</p>



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



<p>The recording of the <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/04/18/developer-hours-introduction-to-the-interactivity-api/"><strong>Developer Hours: Introduction to the Interactivity API</strong></a> with <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/c_z_a_p_l_a">Michal Czaplinski</a></strong> is now available on WordPressTV. It featured a live product demo of the Interactivity API.  Michal is one of the developers on the team that brought the Interactivity API to fruition. Following the demo, Michal answered attendees&#8217; questions. </p>



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



<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> uploaded the recording of his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qalDqYnFRA"><strong>3rd edition of &#8220;Bring me your Issues&#8221; serie</strong></a>s to YouTube. First he gave an overview of the Gutenberg 15.5 release and the showed how to create a custom external template for APIs for the create-block scaffolding tool.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The latter was also a topic of a Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A with <strong>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</strong> and <strong>Fabian Kägy</strong> a couple of years ago, with demos and additional background: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/tooling-using-create-block-scaffolding-and-3rd-party-templates/">Tooling: Using Create-Block Scaffolding and 3rd Party Templates</a></p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/ajaydsouza">Ajay D&#8217;Souza</a></strong> showed you in his post <a href="https://webberzone.com/blog/wordpress-block-development-building-multiple-blocks/"><strong>WordPress block development:&nbsp;Building multiple blocks</strong></a>, how to use the create-block scaffolding tool to add blocks to your plugin. </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://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lego_blocks.jpg">Ypiyush22 Lego blocks lying on floor closeup</a> &#8211; found on Wikimedia. </p>



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<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, 22 Apr 2023 09:15:50 +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:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WPTavern: Newly Rewritten WordPress SQLite Database Integration Plugin Needs Testing";s: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=143887";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"https://wptavern.com/newly-rewritten-wordpress-sqlite-database-integration-plugin-needs-testing";s: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:5938:"<p>WordPress contributors are making progress on officially <a href="https://wptavern.com/sqlite-database-integration-now-available-as-a-plugin-for-testing">supporting SQLite in core</a>, a project that would benefit less complex sites (small to medium sites and blogs) that don’t necessarily require WordPress’ standard MySQL database. In a recent <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/status-update-on-the-sqlite-project/">update</a>, Yoast-sponsored core contributor Ari Stathopoulos said the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sqlite-database-integration/">SQLite Database Integration</a> feature plugin has been rewritten, with the help of Automattic-sponsored core contributor Adam Zielinski, to be a more future-proof implementation.</p>



<p>&#8220;The code has been completely rewritten to use an SQL Lexer and is now stable and able to handle all WordPress queries properly,&#8221; Stathopoulos said. &#8220;The SQL Lexer is part of the <a href="https://github.com/phpmyadmin/sql-parser">PHPMyAdmin/SQL-Parser</a> project (licensed under the GPL 2.0) and it was adapted for WordPress, effectively implementing a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration/pull/9">MySQL to SQLite translation engine</a>. This provides improved security, as well as compatibility.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stathopoulos contends that the next step is to implement these changes in WordPress core &#8220;instead of using a plugin,&#8221; because in its current form it can only be tested on pre-existing websites that already have a MySQL database.</p>



<p>&#8220;Using the <em>featured</em> plugin is a great way to allow users to test the implementation and iron out any issues etc,&#8221; he said. &#8220;However, long-term, it doesn’t make sense to use it as a plugin.&#8221; </p>



<p>Stathopoulos created a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/3220">draft Pull Request</a> and an accompanying <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57793">Trac ticket</a> proposing the new implementation be merged into core.</p>



<p>Although the effort has received positive feedback and support from the community and WordPress lead developer Matt Mullenweg, the feature plugin has only 30 active installs and the new implementation has received very little testing.</p>



<p>Multiple participants in the discussion, including core committer Aaron Jorbin and lead developer Andrew Ozz, expressed concerns about the proposal&#8217;s call for merging the changes to core as the next step. </p>



<p>&#8220;Talk of merging to core feels incredibly premature for a couple of reasons,&#8221; Jorbin said. &#8220;The plugin now only has around 30 installations. I think there needs to be much higher adoption in order to understand how the near-infinite number of plugins will work with this deep underlying change to WordPress.&#8221;</p>



<p>Jorbin also referenced WordPress&#8217; philosophy of building things for end users who don&#8217;t want to have to make decisions about the underlying tech but simply want things to work.</p>



<p>&#8220;Assuming that a user is going to understand different database engines and the potential tradeoffs feels far stretched to me,&#8221; Jorbin said. &#8220;Therefore, any implementation really needs to be rock solid and extremely thoroughly tested.&#8221;</p>



<p>Jorbin also echoed concerns of other contributors in previous conversations, about <a href="https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html">SQLite&#8217;s bizarre religion-infused &#8220;code of ethics</a>.&#8221;</p>



<p>Ozz suggested the plugin could be added to WordPress as a mu-plugin or a &#8220;drop-in&#8221; similar to how caching add-ons are implemented, pushing back on the rigidity of the requirement to fully merge it into core.</p>



<p>&#8220;Both of these methods are also better/more suitable for the users as they can be done by the hosting company or the script used for WordPress installation,&#8221; Ozz said. &#8220;There are some other benefits like independent updates, etc.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stathopoulos responded to these concerns, saying that he sees the merge to core as a long-term goal, although the proposal communicated more of an urgency that confused participants in the discussion.</p>



<p>&#8220;It is premature,&#8221; Stathopoulos admitted. &#8220;However, looking at the bigger picture, it is not premature to plan for the future and get ready for it.</p>



<p>&#8220;It may be premature now, but it won’t be 2 years from now… The problem is that we won’t be able to do it in the future unless we start working on it now.<br />SQLite is not something that can – or should – happen in Core now, or even a year from now. It’s a long-term goal, and should be treated as such.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stathopoulos agreed that the plugin needs more adoption to see how it works with plugins across the ecosystem. He also responded to concerns about users not fully understanding the implications of the database engine they select on installation.</p>



<p>&#8220;The proof-of-concept UI I put in place in the Core PR is just that – a proof of concept,&#8221;  Stathopoulos said. &#8220;Something to trigger discussion and allow us to find solutions. It can be anything, even installation scenarios (do you want to create a blog? A small e-commerce site? A large news outlet? The next Amazon?) That is a discussion that will need to happen when the time is right to discuss UI, but it’s is a bit too early for that, I don’t think we’re there yet.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stathopoulos recommends contributors test the new implementation with all the plugins they normally use, via the <a href="https://w.org/plugins/sqlite-database-integration/">SQLite Database Integration plugin</a> or by testing the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/3220">draft pull request in WordPress Core</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, 21 Apr 2023 21:37:28 +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:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Jinja 2023: Empowering the Future Generation of WordPress Users in Africa";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3164522";s: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://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/04/wordcamp-jinja-2023-empowering-the-future-generation-of-wordpress-users-in-africa/";s: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:7502:"<img src="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/files/2023/04/WordCamp-Jinja-2022-attendees-in-the-Computer-Lab-at-Jinja-College-on-2nd-Sept-2022.jpg" alt="WordCamp Jinja 2022 attendees in the Computer Lab at Jinja College on 2nd Sept 2022" />



<p><em>Inaugural WordCamp Jinja 2022 attendees in the Computer Lab at Jinja College School on 2nd Sept 2022</em>.</p>



<p class="has-drop-cap">At the heart of every revolution lies a spark that ignites the collective spirit, driving the wheels of change and inspiring the future. In the realm of WordPress, this spark is the passion for innovation, collaboration, and creativity. <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Jinja 2023</a> is proud to stand as a torchbearer in this journey, with a mission to empower the future generation of WordPress users: our students and their teachers.</p>



<p>Scheduled for the 4th and 5th of September, 2023, at <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/location/">Iganga Secondary School</a> the prestigious girl&#8217;s school in Eastern Uganda. WordCamp Jinja 2023 embraces the theme, &#8220;<em>There is always more to learn!</em>&#8221; &#8211; adapted from the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">learn.wordpress.org platform</a>. This year, we aim to create a platform for students and teachers to engage with the vibrant WordPress community, empowering them to harness the true potential of this versatile platform. </p>



<p>But WordCamp Jinja 2023 is not merely an exclusive domain for students and teachers. Oh no, dear friends! The invitation extends far and wide, reaching out to the local tech communities to partake in the festivities. We believe that learning is a lifelong journey, and WordPress is a great companion along the way. Whether you are a student, a teacher, a developer, a designer, a blogger, or an entrepreneur, there is always something new to discover and share with WordPress.</p>



<p>The event will feature hands-on and minds-on workshops that encourage participants to explore the depths of the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress platform</a>, while also offering an Entrepreneurship Track with breakout speaker presentations. The extra Contributor Day, scheduled for the 6th of September at <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/location/">The Innovation Village in Jinja</a>, will feature a Website Hackathon to further engage and inspire the attendees as their skills are put to the test to create stunning websites with WordPress in a limited time, working in teams and competing for prizes and glory!.</p>



<p>We believe that by fostering a spirit of learning and collaboration, we can help shape the minds of the future, ensuring a legacy of innovation and progress. To achieve this, we are extending a warm invitation to speakers / trainers. If you have a story to tell, knowledge to share, or inspiration to spread, please submit your proposal through our Call for Speakers page: <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/">https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/</a></p>



<p>We are also seeking sponsors who believe in our mission and would like to support WordCamp Jinja 2023. Your contribution will not only help us create a memorable and impactful event but also pave the way for the future generation of WordPress users. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please visit our Call for Sponsors page: <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/">https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/</a></p>



<p>Together, let us embark on a journey of learning and empowerment at WordCamp Jinja 2023, and create a brighter future for the next generation of WordPress enthusiasts at the heart of Africa and beyond!</p>



<p>PS: WordCamp Jinja 2023 is the second WordCamp to be organised by <a href="https://www.meetup.com/jinja-wordpress-meetup">Jinja WordPress Meetup</a>, after a successful <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/6-places-1-wordcamp-wordcamp-jinja-in-pictures/">WordCamp Jinja 2022</a> on 2nd &#8211; 3rd Sept last year at <a href="https://twitter.com/TheVillageUG/status/1566795035672207360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1566795035672207360%7Ctwgr%5E32eb924a43ac83d945af849afc873ce8ce128b6d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fjinja.wordcamp.org%2F2023%2Flocation%2F">The Innovation Village</a> in Jinja City. WordPress Jinja Meetup holds regular meetups for WordPress enthusiasts in Jinja and nearby towns.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2022/6-places-1-wordcamp-wordcamp-jinja-in-pictures/">6 places, 1 WordCamp: WordCamp Jinja in Pictures</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kudos?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kudos</a> to the partners, speakers and participants who made the inaugural <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordCampJinja?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordCampJinja</a> a success. The engagements, trainings and hackathon were great and insightful. We strive to stay committed to providing platform where young people can meet, connect, and share ideas. <a href="https://t.co/o75W402ID4">pic.twitter.com/o75W402ID4</a></p>&mdash; The Innovation Village (@TheVillageUG) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheVillageUG/status/1566795035672207360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2022</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Impact : Mbale SS <a href="https://twitter.com/ICTClubsUg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ICTClubsUg</a> students presenting thier <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> powered website project earlier today at thier school. They are grateful to <a href="https://twitter.com/Kawauganda?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Kawauganda</a> for inviting them to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordCampJinja?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordCampJinja</a> where they learned about website development with <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WordPress</a> for the first time! <a href="https://t.co/OEUGkoazlE">pic.twitter.com/OEUGkoazlE</a></p>&mdash; Jinja WordPress Meetup (@WordPressJinja) <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPressJinja/status/1575556334493507584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2022</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Thanks to all who turned up physically at <a href="https://twitter.com/TheVillageUG?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TheVillageUG</a> Jinja for our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPressMeetup?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPressMeetup</a>, and those who joined in virtually, including <a href="https://twitter.com/ICTClubsUg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ICTClubsUg</a> students from Jinja College. It's been great!<br /><br />We'll do more meetups in the runup to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordCampJinja?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordCampJinja</a> slated for 4th-5th Sept 2023. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/g7xkAmBlIc">pic.twitter.com/g7xkAmBlIc</a></p>&mdash; Jinja WordPress Meetup (@WordPressJinja) <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPressJinja/status/1648199585272037377?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 18, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Apr 2023 18:18:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Mukalele Rogers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo Friday Show with Vito Peleg and BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74823";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-vito-peleg-and-bobwp/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:421:"<p>In this Friday show we talk about community burnout, the size of larger WordCamps and charging enough for your website builds. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-vito-peleg-and-bobwp/">Do the Woo Friday Show with Vito Peleg and BobWP</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, 21 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;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:97:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 15.6 Introduces Experimental Details Block and Command Center for Site Editor";s: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=143837";s: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:108:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-6-introduces-experimental-details-block-and-command-center-for-site-editor";s: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:4226:"<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/">Gutenberg 15.6</a> is now available with a new <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45055">Details block</a> tucked under the Experiments menu. Once enabled, it can be used to toggle the visibility of hidden content. This can be useful for presenting things like text transcripts for video blocks or simple spoiler alerts. By default the toggle is open in the block editor but closed on the front end. This is the first iteration, so the behavior of the toggle is still somewhat rough.</p>







<p>Another interesting experiment that shipped in version 15.6 is a command center for the Site Editor. It was created to be a quick search for jumping to other pages or templates in the editor. </p>



<p>&#8220;This can be seen as a start on an extensible command and quick search component that can be used for way-finding (<em>go to About page</em>; <em>edit Archive template</em>) and running commands (<em>toggle top toolbar</em>; etc),&#8221; Gutenberg lead architect Matias Ventura said in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48457">ticket</a> outlining the feature. &#8220;The first milestone is to power quick search for content and templates within the site editor.&#8221;</p>







<p>Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella said his goal with the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49330">initial PR</a> is to build the APIs and components for the command center but not necessarily implement all the commands. Ultimately he aims for this feature to do the following:</p>



<ul>
<li>The command center can be loaded in any WPAdmin page</li>



<li>The commands and the command center are independent: Commands can be registered dynamically depending on the context</li>



<li>Some small hierarchy of commands to be able to organize the items</li>



<li>Allowing dynamic searches for commands</li>
</ul>



<p>Gutenberg contributors are still considering how to organize and display commands better based on context, which is one reason why this feature remains behind the Experiments flag.</p>



<p>Version 15.6 also brings spacing presets to the Spacer block settings, allowing theme authors to create sensible presets and users to adjust spacing in a way that will look good across devices.</p>



<p>&#8220;Since the introduction of spacing presets, it became clear from community feedback that <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44002">spacing presets</a> should also be available for the Height control in the Spacer block,&#8221; WordPress developer advocate Birgit Pauli-Haack said in the release post. &#8220;This enhancement in 15.6 gives theme developers much more flexibility over how spacing is applied throughout a site and enables fluid Spacer blocks.&#8221;</p>



<img />



<p>WordPress core contributor Nick Diego filmed a short video about spacing presets for the Spacer block, which demonstrates how fluid spacing work to help a site&#8217;s content and design adapt better to different viewports.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Gutenberg 15.6 came out yesterday, and one of my favorite new features is spacing presets for the Spacer block.<br /><br />Fluid spacers anyone? <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2728.png" alt="✨" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://t.co/k9NJSy05Xd">pic.twitter.com/k9NJSy05Xd</a></p>&mdash; Nick Diego (@nickmdiego) <a href="https://twitter.com/nickmdiego/status/1649055649542856704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>A few other highlights in Gutenberg 15.6 include the following:</p>



<ul>
<li>Adds border support to the Cover block</li>



<li>Makes Style Variations accessible in Browse Mode</li>



<li>List View now allows dragging underneath collapsed non-empty container blocks</li>



<li>Smoother animations for Drop Zone in the canvas</li>
</ul>



<p>Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/">changelog</a> to see all the enhancements, bug fixes, and performance and tooling updates.</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 22:15:39 +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: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:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 10";s: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=149055";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-10/";s: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:85524:"<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> look to the future of WordPress as they continue the development of their new WordPress plugin, <a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a>. From sharing tips on how to keep your WordPress website safe from hacks and vulnerabilities to insights on how to optimize website performance, improve user experience, and enhance website accessibility, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways. </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"> 43</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> discuss the future of WordPress. From the adoption of the block editor to the rise of headless WordPress, they consider the impact on the growing WordPress community. Gain insights on how WordPress professionals can stay ahead of the curve, the importance of keeping up with the latest updates and developments in the WordPress ecosystem, and the significance of fostering a strong and supportive community. This is an honest and hopeful look at the current and future state of WordPress.</p>



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



<ul>
<li><strong>Keep up with the latest WordPress updates.</strong> It&#8217;s important for WordPress professionals to stay up-to-date with the latest WordPress updates, including security patches, bug fixes, and new features. This will ensure that your WordPress site stays secure and runs smoothly.</li>



<li><strong>Invest in continuous learning.</strong> As WordPress evolves, it&#8217;s important to invest in continuous learning to keep up with the latest trends, technologies, and best practices. This can include attending conferences, networking with other professionals, and regularly reading blogs and publications related to WordPress and web development. Keeping up with the latest trends and best practices can help professionals stay competitive and provide the best possible service to their clients.</li>



<li><strong>Focus on user experience.</strong> User experience should be at the forefront of any WordPress professional&#8217;s mind. This means designing websites that are easy to use, fast-loading, and visually appealing, as well as ensuring content is relevant and engaging for the target audience. By focusing on user experience, WordPress professionals can create websites that are both effective and enjoyable to use.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



<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:</h3>



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



<li><a href="https://jetpack.com/">Jetpack</a></li>



<li><a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a></li>



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



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt">Matt Mullenweg</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/chriscoyier">Chris Coyier</a></li>



<li><a href="https://css-tricks.com/">CSS-Tricks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://codepen.io/">CodePen</a></li>



<li><a href="https://yoast.com/">Yoast</a></li>



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



<li><a href="https://github.com/">GitHub</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.atlassian.com/">Atlassian</a></li>



<li><a href="https://trello.com/">Trello</a></li>



<li><a href="https://asana.com/id">Asana</a></li>



<li><a href="https://basecamp.com/">Basecamp</a></li>



<li><a href="https://zapier.com/">Zapier</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.zoom.us/">Zoom</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.figma.com/">Figma</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.sketch.com/">Sketch</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.invisionapp.com/">InVision</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="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="wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Session 10 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>



<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Nice. Um, so it makes it really nice to stream YouTube. Um, okay, so<br />session 10. Now turn off YouTube. Um, so session 10, we&#8217;re talking, um, last week we said<br />we&#8217;re good on the version for Crop Dotted Express, and we had saw a new direction with the<br />project you had been working on anyway. Mm-hmm. And we spent some time just privately<br />discussing that.<br />And so, um, we were just chatting in the pre-roll before this about okay is, you know, building it<br />in public, but we&#8217;re, we&#8217;ve pa not paused, we&#8217;ve put a bow on that one and said, okay, there&#8217;s<br />something else here. And now it&#8217;s time to kind of explore that and figure out what&#8217;s, what could<br />that product be. [00:01:00] Um, you just had a couple really good, um, comments about that<br />whole process of here&#8217;s that one, but we&#8217;re going onto this next one.<br />Hmm. Can you share some of that you&#8217;re just sharing with me? Cause I think it&#8217;s really good<br />and I don&#8217;t want to Sure. Oh, your butcher, you&#8217;re your top.<br />Corey Maass: Um, so, uh, for the sake of accountability, I do wanna say that Crop express, uh,<br />is pending a read me update that you and I worked on, I think last time. And there are a couple<br />of tweaks to make to the product itself.<br />The plugin itself. To in fact put a bow on it cuz I wanted it. It&#8217;s gonna be, you know, so, so a little<br />digression here. It&#8217;s very easy for, uh, any product team as we now are to go, uh, that was<br />yesterday&#8217;s new shiny, [00:02:00] today&#8217;s new shinies over there. Um, and if we are not<br />abandoning crop express, which we are not, then it&#8217;s important that I sit down at some point and<br />actually put a bow on it.<br />And we don&#8217;t just keep saying we&#8217;re gonna put a bow on it and let it ride, but, um, you know, let<br />it be a whole product unto itself. I think that&#8217;s important. So that&#8217;s on my list. Um, but yeah, we,<br />in, in the process of talking about crop express and where the value add is, um, one of the<br />things that you talked about really well, um, is the, Difference between, you had a little graphic<br />that, you know, pain solving a pain versus adding value.<br />Um, and obviously these things are not mutually exclusive by any stretch, but, um, crop Express<br />solved a problem for us. That&#8217;s why, why we started the conversation in the first place. I built this<br />little web utility. You went, holy crap, this [00:03:00] needs to be in WordPress. Uh, and that<br />launched our journey, but we kept having these great meta conversations about image images<br />in WordPress as a whole.<br />And one of the things, problems that I&#8217;ve been struggling with for a while, for my own blog and<br />again for, um, client sites, not only is it cropping images correctly, which solves a pain point,<br />ideally, um, but is you write a blog post and, and then what? Right. You need other assets to go<br />along with it. Uh, and then in a perfect, you know, so we&#8217;re talking, now we&#8217;re talking about<br />marketing, right?<br />We&#8217;re talking about marketing assets, things to put on Twitter, images to put on Twitter images<br />to put on Instagram, and, and having to go over to Canva to do that or some other tool. Um, and<br />so now we&#8217;re talking [00:04:00] about that, which is, you know, there is pain involved. These are<br />extra steps, but it&#8217;s the difference between, to me, you know, the difference between trying to<br />write a, a basic blog post with an image inward press, and that it&#8217;s.<br />You get to the end of the words and you&#8217;re like, oh, this is such a pain. I need to do something<br />with an image and leave WordPress. Versus traditionally, I think we&#8217;d write a blog post in<br />WordPress and then go, okay, the WordPress part is done. Now let me jump over to Canva,<br />Photoshop, whatever it is to generate these other images.<br />Um, and so now we&#8217;re sort of switching over to a value add potentially.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. I, um, most of my product experience is in the pain threshold. Um, you know,<br />backup, security, all that, you know, updating stuff, very [00:05:00] utilitarian, um, practical<br />things, and I really appreciate it. That&#8217;s part of my personality too. I like utility things. You know,<br />there&#8217;s this pin, for instance, is the big. A pin.<br />And in my belief, there&#8217;s no other better pin than this pin. So I take &#8217;em from everywhere that<br />has &#8217;em, that gives &#8217;em out. And I promote all Napa Valley Winery. Um, so I, I&#8217;m practical in that</p>



<p>utilitarian, like, do something for you. And it was great to see some of the products, like people<br />just, they needed it, you know?<br />Um, I always aspired to the ones that help people look good, make money, all that. And we built<br />those into those products for sure, where people could use those things and what labeled them<br />or package them into a bigger thing. And so a lot of the products were very utility products, but<br />the marketing and things we did was very aspirational.<br />Um, [00:06:00] this one so interesting because you had already been working on something and<br />you showed it to me and I was like, oh, wow. And. As I can do anything, I can blow something<br />real big up, you know? And that&#8217;s what we did. We, wow. The compelling thing was, you know,<br />I&#8217;ll take some of the marketing tools, like for instance, uh, the one I just kind of default to think of<br />is Optum Monster.<br />Hmm. When you see what, whatever time they came out with the Optum Monster, um, when<br />you see that a popup and what they, what you could do with that, you instantly kind of go, oh<br />wow, I could do that too. And that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s really compelling for me. Um mm-hmm. When you&#8217;re<br />able to show an outcome that people go, I mean, it&#8217;s marketing product for sure.<br />It helps you build your email, um, email list. It helps you potentially, [00:07:00] uh, get some<br />purchases from coupons and things like that. Not to go into the full thing about Optum Monster,<br />but. You go right there, you can see what the product does. Mm-hmm. And if you don&#8217;t have<br />that, you can go, wow, this could make, make it easier.<br />What&#8217;s compelling about what you said was, or what we, we, you showed me is this, one of the<br />many things we talked about was the social images, being able to, you write your post and then<br />you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re ready to promote it and like you said, go to Cam and do all these things. Um, I<br />think in this conversation, what I&#8217;ve kinda learned from Crop Drive Express and then past stuff is<br />particularly with this idea, we can give that aha oh wow moment for someone.<br />And we talked about using it on some of our client sites, post status and different things. Um,<br />because then when you see. That&#8217;s where I [00:08:00] think, you know, when they see<br />something going out that has a nice treatment, um, yeah. Where it&#8217;s not just a link. I mean,<br />that&#8217;s what I tend to do personally. Um, then I think there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s some merit there of you want<br />your base hub to be your website and they&#8217;re promoting outs through your social channels, and<br />then those to look appealing and good, whether it&#8217;s Facebook, Instagram, whatever those things<br />are.<br />Yeah. Um, and kinda lead back. And that&#8217;s where I go. I&#8217;ll tell you, I in this, in this whole project<br />that we&#8217;ve been working on together, it just keep, I keep coming back to you and I talked about<br />our, at our product owners meet up this week. Um, getting as close as you can to the pain that a<br />potential customer has, um, or that desire to do for them to look better, make more money.</p>



<p>Um, I don&#8217;t know. This is the work I need to do more is getting closer to that, you know? Mm-<br />hmm. Where it&#8217;s not just theory, us talking, it&#8217;s like, [00:09:00] you know, do, is this an issue?</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s, um, you know, a book out called the Mom Test and mm-hmm. The thing is, when<br />you have an idea and you go to your mom, she&#8217;s always gonna say, I love it.<br />Yeah. So making it in a way where it&#8217;s more discovery. But that&#8217;s my thoughts about this and I<br />wanna be sure because this is a bigger project. Um, I guess the word would be validating. Yep.<br />Is there a pain point? Is there someone willing to, to, to pay for it? Um, so we&#8217;re really taking it. I<br />know we approached this as a hobby, but going, okay, give our best effort to make this into<br />something that actually does pay us my thought.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. . And that was, and that was, I think, part of why, so I don&#8217;t remember the<br />summary to, to, we&#8217;re on session 10. So in session eight, I think we, we, the conversation came<br />to a point where we said, okay, so, so [00:10:00] cropping images is one piece of the puzzle of<br />consistent, good looking images on a WordPress site.<br />That could be a blog, that could be WooCommerce, whatever, right? Um, and so we were still<br />sort of solving, um, yeah, we were solving a basic problem. Um, again, a p a a point of pain that,<br />uh, we had. Um, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m trying, in my brain, I keep drawing this analogy of, um, a basic car, your<br />Honda Civic from, I, my first Honda Civic, uh, that I bought in 2015 was from 2000.<br />So 15 year old, you know, but in good shape. But it would get you there, but no bells and<br />whistles. The, the crank windows, the whole thing, right? And so, um, and, and a lot of people, I<br />think this was a, you know, more traditionally [00:11:00] WordPress as a blog platform was that<br />for a lot of people, I&#8217;m gonna put words out.</p>



<p>Maybe people find it or they don&#8217;t. I&#8217;m gonna tell my friends about it along come social media,<br />uh, and, and other paradigms and, and the things go from, I guess you sort of hope for inbound,<br />you know, and we&#8217;re talking about amateurs or, or non-professionals is the better word, right?<br />But, um, you know, to outbound.<br />And then also I think there&#8217;s an expectation now, or most people blog for money, right? Most<br />people publish for money. Most people use WordPress for money a lot more than back in the<br />day when it was, you know, express yourself or put yourself online or, or, you know, build<br />authority, all those things. Um, and so taking that, uh, your, the, the bigger problem that we,<br />when we talked about with crop express of consistent [00:12:00] images and putting yourself out<br />there, and it&#8217;s like we&#8217;re talking about, um, Individuality, right?<br />So it&#8217;s not just cropping finding a, finding a, a stock photo one for each post, right? Or each, um,<br />product image. If you&#8217;ve, if you&#8217;re running Woo commerce, it&#8217;s like, yeah, it&#8217;s a square. Okay, it&#8217;s,<br />I sell, you know, this widget and that widget, and I crop them all to be squares. But it&#8217;s like, do<br />those images stand out?<br />Do those images have more information? So it&#8217;s like, if I go to the website, there&#8217;s all the<br />information next to a photo. But on Twitter, if I put that photo up and it&#8217;s just a picture of a<br />widget, it doesn&#8217;t list the benefits. It doesn&#8217;t, you know, so it&#8217;s not, um, a compelling bigger, and<br />this is where, you know, um, I think one of the things that really clicked for me was you sent me.<br />The, on the, on the post status blog, one of the threads there is, or tags or something is, you<br />know, here are all the [00:13:00] people we&#8217;ve featured. And I was like, wait, all of these banner<br />images not only are the same size, but they&#8217;ve all got the same treatment. They all have the<br />post status logo on the left. Um, you know, and we look at, and that, and that, that solidified<br />something for me that you&#8217;d touched on, but I, I couldn&#8217;t relate to as much.<br />Like, you, you really liked slides, um, and talked about using slides again to promote things.<br />And, and we sort of went, wow, what if, you know, you have, um, uh, your product images, you<br />or your, your, your blog post banner, image featured image, um, that had bullet points on it or,<br />you know, so it was like taking these, I guess what I&#8217;m trying to do is summarize, um, very<br />specifically, A little bit of how we got here, but also what we&#8217;re now talking about, right?<br />So we&#8217;re talking about image treatment, image generation, um, based around one post quote<br />unquote [00:14:00] post, which in WordPress can be a product, can be a blog post, can be an<br />article, can be your course if you&#8217;re running an l m s, whatever it is. Um, and so that&#8217;s kind of<br />the, the switch from solving a pain point, cropping an image to this huge value add.<br />And it&#8217;s like, and I guess, yeah, uh, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s coming together in my head. You brought in opt,<br />brought up Optum Monster. So it&#8217;s like you could have a website, you could have great content.<br />Optin Monster is this value add. If your end goal is promotion, money, fame, and fortune, all that<br />kind of stuff, being a reality TV star, um, optin Monster is this great.<br />You know, the going from, from your Honda Civic to the, the sport version, and then the fins and<br />the, you know, so now suddenly you&#8217;ve got, you know, you&#8217;ve gone from a basic way to publish<br />content to, you know, bells and [00:15:00] whistles essentially. Um, which isn&#8217;t to diminish it like<br />bells and whistles are often it&#8217;s, um, not it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s said in a condescending way or a bad way, but<br />we&#8217;re talking about like, okay, how can you, you know, make the, the basic car that gets you<br />from A to B be a fun experience, that kind of thing.<br />Um, enough restraining the metaphors. The point is, um, yeah, OptinMonster adds this extra<br />value and whatnot. So it&#8217;s like if we have, uh, if you write a blog post, what we&#8217;re talking about<br />doing is, is. A product in WordPress that can generate slides, can generate images, could crop<br />the image, but also could add potentially a, a graphical treatment.<br />Um, so it&#8217;s always got a blue fade or it&#8217;s always got a logo on the left, or it&#8217;s always got, and, and<br />these things would be auto-generated. Um, so you, you finish your post, you click a button and<br />[00:16:00] you&#8217;ve got an image for Twitter, an image for Facebook, an image that you know, I<br />mean, taking this to a, um, an extreme no idea if we can yet, if we can do this, but, um, anim an<br />creating an animated gift that has three slides that go by or, you know, things, so things you<br />could upload to Instagram.<br />You know, if it&#8217;s an animated gif it should be, we could create an MP4 out of it and then it&#8217;s, um,<br />a story for Instagram cuz it&#8217;s a video and da da da. So all these, all these shareable assets,<br />which again, take that basic blog post and just blow it up to, to create all these amazing things<br />that you could then do something with.</p>



<p>Um, when we came to, when we were starting to talk about that as a product in our previous call<br />or previous previous call, that was when I said, okay, let&#8217;s have a conversation offline cuz I think<br />maybe I&#8217;ve got a solution for this. Um, so in [00:17:00] parallel, for a few months now, um, I built.<br />Little SAS app, basically web service, um, called screenshot.express and haven&#8217;t launched it.<br />That was if, if you follow me on Twitter, or I think I might have mentioned here too, like this is a<br />product that I built, um, and the a p I works, it works as a, is a little screenshotting platform. Um,<br />but what I really wanted it for was, yes, it&#8217;s great for taking a screenshot of a website, but if it<br />can take a picture of, of, of a website.<br />But that website could be the size and shape of a Twitter banner or, you know, could be a, um, a<br />slide. Then we&#8217;re now talking about using H T M L to, to define a layout. Whatever we want that<br />to look like. And then taking pictures of it. And then there you&#8217;ve got your image and so, and CR<br />and [00:18:00] generating different types of H T M L pages and also taking advantage of res, the<br />responsiveness of, of layout.<br />So it&#8217;s like if you have a header and some text next to each other, but on mobile, the he, the<br />header goes above the text with one H T M L output. You take two pictures, one wide and one<br />narrow. You&#8217;ve now got a, uh, a Twitter banner and you know, a mobile screenshot or whatever.<br />So it&#8217;s like, I realized that in parallel, I&#8217;ve already got this little service that will potentially solve<br />the technical aspect of this.<br />Um, and so that was where sort of all this came together and we went, wow, that&#8217;s, that to me is<br />a much bigger thing. Um, and so as you said at the, the beginning of my ramble, like, we see<br />this as a, as a much bigger product to me, right away my gut says, okay, that&#8217;s much more of a,<br />something we could sell. You know, it&#8217;s, [00:19:00] it&#8217;s a big packageable thing.<br />Whereas crop Express, it was like, this is a great little utility. It solves a neat little problem. And<br />we could probably keep adding some things or, or splashing around in the problem until we<br />found something that would, people pay, would pay a little bit for. Um, but this to me seems like<br />something much bigger.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, for sure. And I don&#8217;t, um, my tendency is always like, oh, let&#8217;s go, let&#8217;s go.<br />And I&#8217;m trying to really not do that because I, I wanna be careful, you, you in particular. Me too.<br />But you, um, as a developer on the partner, um, and lead on this, I, I wanna be really careful<br />with the time. Mm-hmm. Um, because I, I think we both go, we did something of value here, and<br />I wanna be a little bit more calculated than I have in the past about Okay.<br />Because I can blow these ideas up and go, okay, I see these, what I don&#8217;t wanna do is just do<br />that in a [00:20:00] vacuum. Um, not to like you and I are doing this, but I, I want to, I feel like<br />there&#8217;s something so powerful of getting to whatever the person is trying to do, like having<br />somebody in mind, or talking to people and seeing what they.<br />Talk about it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s funny. So with product at post status, I go, just to give you kind of a parallel<br />about how I&#8217;ve historically think about product and need to change and, and evolve, is I go,<br />okay, for our agency, we, we saw real quickly becoming an owner post status that, um, okay,<br />product people, smaller group of people than you got hosting companies, you have<br />professionals that do all the work.<br />But I really honed in on, there&#8217;s a lot of WordPress agencies out there, and I don&#8217;t see in this<br />space a lot of people that there are really cool companies doing really high-end work for<br />agencies like [00:21:00] Troy, Dean&#8217;s work, um, uro, different things like that. But I go, okay, I,<br />for me, Passion and ability and go.<br />I&#8217;d love to promote and help people tell stories and draw expertise. So long story short, besides<br />just Slack and e and our email newsletter, I think we can offer more to them. Where I&#8217;m at in that<br />product is really interesting for me. Frustrating. I shouldn&#8217;t say interesting. I don&#8217;t wanna say<br />interesting.<br />It&#8217;s frustrating as hell is I go, we could do mar co-marketing for these agencies. Now you know<br />how it is, you bring in an idea to somebody else. It&#8217;s so different from the my uh, the, my big Fat<br />Greek wedding when he goes, you have to make it his idea. And I go, oh, that&#8217;s so true with me<br />too. But, but I go, if you get to customer and see what they&#8217;re doing, um, potential customer and<br />just talk.<br />So like in my interviews with the agency owners, one of the things they stand up, but I<br />[00:22:00] think there&#8217;s a bias cause I&#8217;m coming at as post status. Um, and one of the features<br />we&#8217;ve had in our products is job listings. I go. That&#8217;s what they tend to have gravitated toward it.</p>



<p>And I go, well, I don&#8217;t know what more else we could potentially offer in that, but keep getting<br />pros in there.<br />And so that&#8217;s like existing product, just trying to make it better, which is valid foundational. I<br />wanted to do more for them. Now this is where we&#8217;re in that process and, but I don&#8217;t want it to<br />be like, I got this cool idea. Cuz then you&#8217;re kind of just striking trying to try to hit a hit, a hit a<br />winning lado.<br />Um, but that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m at, you know? And, um, with this my mind went to, oh, I mean we, we<br />were talking about our own problems right now, and then we&#8217;re using some clients and different<br />things to think about that. But before we go, I wanna make sure [00:23:00] specifically first and<br />foremost on your behalf is we. Gets some validation.<br />A little spark of something. Yeah. And collect enough sparks that go, this could be a fire. Right?<br />This could be, I just, I wanna do that cuz my tendency is I&#8217;m an DF fair and you know, I dr at the<br />opportunity to work with a great developer like yourself and, and product person like yourself.<br />And, uh, so anyway, that&#8217;s where my mind tends to go.<br />But this is interesting to both of us. Um, now it&#8217;s like if you got a hammer, everything looks like,<br />like a nail. Uh, I wanna be careful of that in this.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah, sure. And I tend to build first and ask questions later. We know this, so,<br />which is<br />Cory Miller: freaking cool. I think that&#8217;s better. See, it would be better as an idea person to be<br />able to build it first too.<br />Right. And say, but I just, I wanna be careful cause I don&#8217;t have those skillsets.</p>



<p>Corey Maass: Well, and, and this one is, I think one of the other things I mentioned in the pre-<br />roll is [00:24:00] this is a much bigger lift. Yeah. And so I&#8217;m also, my brain is saying there&#8217;s, there</p>



<p>are red flags here to that approach. Crop express, small, you know, crank something out, get it,<br />you know, we, the prototype is going to be straightforward, uh, or was straightforward and, and<br />you coming in and going start with featured images.<br />Great. Even simpler. So we&#8217;ve got one and it turned out to be replicable. So then media library,<br />um, block, um, we did have to hire somebody to get us over a couple of hurdles, but for the<br />most part, Replicable, um, reusable code and all at once. Whereas this, I mean, so I already<br />started my intention of spinning up screenshot express, which is abstract.<br />And I knew that. I&#8217;m like, this is probably isn&#8217;t a thing. I&#8217;m gonna, [00:25:00] I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m gonna sell<br />on its own. There are, and there are people who are making progress with, with other products<br />that take screenshots. And I admire that because I&#8217;m like, this is a, this is a service. This is a,<br />this a hundred percent a solution looking for a problem.<br />And so it&#8217;ll be other developers or me as a developer that uses this tool for whatever problem.<br />And so it&#8217;s like the, I said about building a, a WordPress plugin, which I think you and I should<br />review and start pulling apart and see what we can do with, um, But it&#8217;s, uh, to generate social<br />images to accompany a post.<br />Um, and so the good news is, yeah, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve solved some of the, like, some of the problems,<br />like, what do I wanna say, as a product, it&#8217;s more complicated and involving a third party service,<br />like screenshot.express is more complicated. And [00:26:00] then setting up different images for<br />different use cases is complicated.<br />And, uh, and solving the right problems is complicated. It&#8217;s like you go to Canva, they&#8217;ve got like,<br />not only do they have all the assets and stuff, but they&#8217;ve got a gajillion templates. What do you<br />wanna make today? I wanna make an Instagram post. I wanna make a, you know, a music<br />video. I wanna make a dot, dot dot.<br />Like all these things. So somebody had to sit down and, and make templates out of all those<br />things. Um, and so it&#8217;s building, this is going, you know, as already. Even though I&#8217;ve solved<br />some of the problems connecting to the p i of Screenshot express and stuff is like, all of that is<br />more complicated, a much more complicated user experience.<br />Um, before we even get to the fun part of like, okay, now we can just build a gajillion templates<br />and hope that one of them is the right thing and, and, and on and on. So, um, so yeah, it, it<br />strikes me that you doing more interviews, re more research, [00:27:00] um, us getting more<br />answers, um, before I, like, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m inclined to, I keep waiting for you to say, like you saying,<br />featured image early on was such a pivotal point, like, here&#8217;s how we simplify this big,<br />complicated thing to start with.</p>



<p>Um, so no pressure, but I&#8217;m waiting for you to come up with that again. Um, but I do think that<br />since I&#8217;ve got, since I&#8217;m close to having s a, an initial. Social image generator plugin forward<br />WordPress using Screenshot express that maybe we start there cuz it does solve the problem.<br />Um, enough for us to, for, for you to get eyes on it as far as user experience and go, yeah, no,<br />this is, you&#8217;ve made it as you, Corey have made it as simple as possible.<br />It&#8217;s good enough. You know, we can, we can [00:28:00] tolerate people, people will tolerate<br />stepping through this pro progress process, even though it&#8217;s a handful of steps to get the value<br />that we are creating at the end. Um, and then, and we keep having these conversations like we<br />did with Crop Express, where we go, okay, wait, but if we put this over here, it makes more<br />sense in context.<br />Or if we mm-hmm. You know, connected to a different service or we put it in front of certain<br />kinds of people, um, then. It&#8217;ll take us, it&#8217;ll take us to it. It&#8217;ll help us grow.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. Uh, I just asked ChatGPT what are the most popular features of Canva?<br />Hmm. So that, that&#8217;s interesting. Um, excuse me, because we&#8217;ve mentioned that a number of<br />times and different photo editing tool.<br />Um, I think so two parts, making sure I really understand what Screenshotted Express can do at<br />the moment. Um, [00:29:00] but two, I think in this next experiment is having, having a default<br />customer in mind. Yeah. And, you know, sizing that market, the, the person that we know, that<br />we think we understand or have some connections with.<br />And then seeing how that market is. Because it cur, it occurs to me like I told you with backup<br />buddy. I go, well, that&#8217;s a hundred percent. Theoretically, theoretically, everyone should want a,<br />a backup for their WordPress site, right? Um, that was easy, right? Because the, you know,<br />we&#8217;re gonna go into this field and we&#8217;re gonna hit something.<br />Um,<br />Corey Maass: But to, but I think to your point, like your average non nerd or non-professional<br />doesn&#8217;t think about that. You know, there&#8217;s a reason why they are automatically that most<br />hosting companies [00:30:00] offer automatic backups. And even if they don&#8217;t, I almost can<br />guarantee that they&#8217;re doing at least some periodic, because the majority of their support tickets<br />are, I broke my site, or somebody hacked my site.<br />What? And I, you know, and, and support. A technician comes back and says, great, what<br />about, what do you have for backups? And the person goes, what&#8217;s a backup? And then they<br />go, oh, well you are lucky on our server in a very hidden technical way. I can at least restore it<br />from seven days ago or from yesterday or what have you.<br />You know, but you should have thought about this and then mm-hmm. You know, but, but your<br />average person doesn&#8217;t think about backups. Right. Um, so you still, you were solving a problem<br />that everybody has, but most people don&#8217;t know they have. Mm-hmm.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. And, and where when we get the main product out, we&#8217;re able to do<br />[00:31:00] content marketing around all the reasons why it would be good.<br />We even created a content, um, content replacement calendar or something. We tried to say,<br />what&#8217;s the value of all your posts? Because I lost, uh, I lost things from my personal website<br />when we had a server crash. Now, you know, there they weren&#8217;t invaluable, but it was, it was a<br />headache. So we started doing that to try to map that out.<br />But, um, when we talk about avatars for a second, um, we have your clients content journey,<br />and then the, what I hear over, and it&#8217;s so interesting, my, my own perception of WordPress has<br />changed so much. Um, but what I hear over and over from our agencies and owners and things<br />is that the people running when they deliver projects, I, it&#8217;s really compelling that it&#8217;s marketing<br />[00:32:00] specific people.<br />Mm-hmm. I just got outta the, a agency owners meetup and it was again, like they&#8217;re turning<br />sites over and typically it&#8217;s marketing related type. People are actually the people using their<br />WordPress sites from enterprise. WordPress does really good in the enterprise because<br />marketers go, it&#8217;s cheaper, it&#8217;s faster, and I can use it.<br />So I, I would say like in this backup buddy thought, I go big market, I am a marketer. I go that,<br />that&#8217;s really compelling. Which is why when we talked about screenshotted express, I was like<br />the social images. I, but I don&#8217;t, I gotta admit, make sure I&#8217;m honest about this. I don&#8217;t do that. I<br />don&#8217;t really post to our website.<br />Um, we have team and content journey and different things that do that. But if we take that a,<br />that&#8217;s one big avatar. I can like say, generally speaking, [00:33:00] if we hit the marketing room</p>



<p>and that&#8217;s the, the sexy make you look better, make money kind of realm. Yeah. So there&#8217;s one,<br />um, I think about yours as a lot of publishers, um, uh, publishers.<br />But even like a lot of the content journey, you know, clients, um, it&#8217;s, it kind of boils down to the<br />marketing people. They&#8217;re the ones interfacing with those clients. Yeah. Very.<br />Corey Maass: Yep. Um, yeah, we&#8217;ve got, I&#8217;ve got a couple of different scenarios. One is on one<br />team, we have a person dedicated to social media. Um, and I am, so, so there&#8217;s an interview I<br />want to have, um, customer interview, like talk to them about how they&#8217;re making stuff.<br />I think they&#8217;re using Canva. Um, and I think that they&#8217;ve got template set up so that, again, it&#8217;s,<br />they plug in a featured [00:34:00] image, they plug in a featured image, but it&#8217;s got the same<br />treatment every time. Um, I want to make sure of. And I&#8217;d love, we&#8217;ll have you talk to them if, if<br />you&#8217;re following the, um, mom interview methodology.<br />Um, cuz I&#8217;d also, I think what would be really interesting would be, I have a history of taking, uh,<br />blue ocean products and, and rebuilding them, repurposing them for WordPress. Um,<br />sometimes with legit value and sometimes just because it&#8217;s a smaller market, so it&#8217;s easier to<br />focus. And, and I&#8217;m still fascinated with the idea of WordPress being the control panel for a, a<br />person&#8217;s entire business.<br />Um, but I also would be curious if, you know, sorry. Um, if the people are who, if they are<br />jumping into Canva, are they struggling? Like, is it too many choices? [00:35:00] Is it, um,<br />repeatable? Uh, sorry, I gotta let a dog in. Hold on.<br />Cory Miller: Go, go for it. I, I&#8217;m opening up a y board to take some notes.<br />Corey Maass: And thankfully my spouse stepped in and cornered him. Um, but yeah, it&#8217;s, you<br />know, so is, is there value in generating these things from WordPress with the expectation that,<br />like I just wrote, wrote a blog post, and as we talked about before, you know, there&#8217;s the, the last<br />10% or the, you know, maybe it&#8217;s, let&#8217;s use 80 20, right?<br />Like 80% of what should be the process is writing a blog post. But at least in our experience,<br />80% of the pain is. Um, the technically speaking anyway is going and finding an image,<br />cropping [00:36:00] an image, all that kind of stuff, which is what we were trying to solve with<br />Crop Express. And so, um, you know, is it, is it parallel here where it&#8217;s like, okay, I&#8217;ve written a<br />blog post now what?<br />And I think that that&#8217;s a big problem, uh, to solve. Uh, or it&#8217;s a, a question that, that we wanna be<br />careful. We want to do a good job of defining the question to then come up with the solution.<br />Um, and so it&#8217;s, you know, our people. If, if, if we can get to the point where you&#8217;ve generated a<br />blog post, click a button, and then you&#8217;ve got assets, that&#8217;s amazing.<br />Um, is that enough? How hard or difficult is it to create those assets? Because it&#8217;s like Canva<br />offers creativity. Right. You can do anything all the time forever. But I, for me, um, like I have a<br />music blog, and so every time I, [00:37:00] or one of my writers writes a review, I go into Canva<br />and I open exa, I open the same design, I say duplicate page.<br />I change the title. I change the, so that it has the same treatment, right? Like, I&#8217;m not doing what<br />Canva kind of seems to want you to do, which is starting from scratch every single time.<br />Because I&#8217;m not, I&#8217;m not doing that. I&#8217;m not trying to be that creative, and in fact, that takes way<br />more time rather than, You know, a quick, simple 32nd, copy, paste, change, title, publish.<br />Um, and so I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m intrigued to find out if I&#8217;m right about that. Um, mm-hmm. You know, if, if our<br />team, if my teammate, somebody writes a story, publishes a story, like we have professional<br />writers who are writing, um, you know, long form content, and then we&#8217;ve got, again, a separate<br />[00:38:00] person whose job it is in part to create social media content from that story to then<br />publish everywhere.<br />Um, and I&#8217;d be interested to know if it&#8217;s a simple process for them or, uh, the hypothesis similar<br />to the crop express hypothesis is are they going, you know, the hard part should be. Putting all<br />this stuff out there, looking at the analytics, like creating a, essentially a, a mini campaign, um, to<br />promote this blog post.<br />But most of the pain is actually going in and, and cropping an image and adding the treatment<br />and all that kind of stuff. Um, and if, and if there&#8217;s value in having that sit in WordPress<br />alongside the blog post, um, you know, whether it&#8217;s under media or whether it&#8217;s going into the<br />post and then seeing a little icon that opens up an app or, you know, whatever approach it is,<br />um, you know, to make sure that there&#8217;s as much benefit there as we&#8217;re [00:39:00] hoping.<br />Cory Miller: Okay. I&#8217;m trying to make sure I take all these,</p>



<p>um, okay. So, um, potential avatars, I think we&#8217;ve said marketing. I try to put a little bit. Thing<br />here. We got publishers I added in here. Um, because one thing that kind of, if you, if I just<br />camp out in this marketing realm, um, I thought about screenshot express, and I go ebook<br />creation or lead magnet creation.<br />Mm-hmm. Like the covers. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, some kind of cover. Now I think that would<br />also lend to this featured image creation in the sense of those graphics you talked about with<br />post status. Like we got the featured image graphic that we kind of pulled together, but it just<br />kind of made me [00:40:00] think like outputs, maybe I should put that here.<br />Uh, outputs,<br />um, social images, we said this, uh, featured images, uh, oh e let me just say ebook coverage,<br />just in the realm of possibility here. Yep.<br />Corey Maass: Slides was the thing that got you your gears turning early on.<br />Cory Miller: I was thinking of tip boxes. Lemme see if I can share my screen. Nope. I have to<br />close the Y board. I was on, uh, CAO&#8217;s website looking at their di i y lighting kit and they had a<br />pullout with a tip. Oh, okay. So I, I don&#8217;t know how to call, like pull out, pull out boxes and I<br />guess that could be quotes<br />they call to action. Hmm. Um, like, [00:41:00] well, let&#8217;s put ads, ads into Oh yeah. Post et<br />cetera. Wow. Yeah.<br />Corey Maass: Wow. Wow. Ads like auto ad gener, ad ad image generator from a Woo<br />commerce product. Mm. Holy crap.<br />Cory Miller: That could be coupons, like mm-hmm. I, I was even thinking your HTML side, cuz<br />you&#8217;re generating H M L and then you&#8217;re taking the snapshot of it.<br />But like, you know, Kohl&#8217;s or Bed Bath and Beyond, you know, they have a coupon and it looks<br />like a little coupon thing. And I mean, if there&#8217;s HTML, if we&#8217;re generating HTML, don&#8217;t even, you<br />don&#8217;t have to go to the screenshot if you don&#8217;t want to, but like, you could put that with a little<br />dressing that kind of calls it out, so.<br />Yep. Um,[00:42:00]<br />okay, let me, let&#8217;s do this for a second. Let&#8217;s take this marketing because I think we, there&#8217;s the<br />big market, bigger market there. It&#8217;s a lot of the users. When I think about creating a blog post,<br />I&#8217;m thinking about organic search traffic primarily. Um, But so that it gets placed in the search<br />engine, uh, it gets ranked and then traffic comes to that page.<br />When they get on page, then I want them to do something. This is where, you know, Optum<br />monitor or popup thing is like compelling because it&#8217;s, you get attention, like offer free offer<br />inside, right?<br />Corey Maass: Kind of thing. Yeah. It turns, it turns passive into, uh, there&#8217;s ac there&#8217;s<br />something&#8217;s actionable. Yeah. So it&#8217;s not, don&#8217;t just consume, like, and so this is where you&#8217;ve<br />got, uh, share these, bookmark these, you know, it&#8217;s like, so I&#8217;m reading somebody&#8217;s article and<br />yet I get a popup that says, [00:43:00] want more great content like this?<br />Sign up. Want an ebook of related content? Sign up. Um, here, share buttons. Please share this<br />on, you know, if you got value out of this, share this on Twitter. Um, email it to a friend. Um, but<br />thinking in terms of, yeah, images, um, so, you know, if we&#8217;re just talking content, written words,<br />then, um, my, the featured image that you&#8217;d see ideally would be stylized, something that fits in<br />with your site.<br />But if you ask a guest to share this story on Twitter, big pretty image is obviously more<br />compelling than just a, a headline. Um, but you don&#8217;t want to share the featured image because<br />the featured image probably doesn&#8217;t have, uh, the title of the post. Uh, it might or might not, but<br />it certainly, what I, what I thought you, a brilliant idea you came up with was, [00:44:00] you<br />know, a featured image with a, or, or a shareable image, which is the featured includes the<br />featured image, the title of the post, and then one or two.<br />It could be the excerpt, it could be one or two bullet points, but, so it&#8217;s like if I go to share, if I<br />read an article, You know, and it has a pretty image of a, some sunset and it says, best places<br />to retirement, retire to, okay. But if I&#8217;m sharing an image on Twitter, the image that I share should<br />say the best places to retire to should have the sunset in the background.<br />And then, you know, a, a tag, an excerpt that says the results will blow you away. Total click bait.<br />Or, you know, the top, you know, should say the top five, Hawaii, Alaska, blah, blah, blah. You<br />know, click to read the rest of &#8217;em, kind of thing. So then it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, um, you know, and that&#8217;s<br />different from the featured image and that&#8217;s different from, that&#8217;s the type of thing you&#8217;d run over</p>



<p>to Canva and, and generate and, and maybe [00:45:00] generate in a number of different sizes<br />and shapes to then push, you know, drag into buffer or whatever you use to schedule your<br />socials or to broadcast your socials.<br />I definitely wanna make sure we don&#8217;t get into that realm. Um, Because interacting with all those<br />APIs is a nightmare, and there&#8217;s a hundred of those tools already. But, um, oh, and, um, Yost, sh<br />uh, the OG image, uh, is the other one. So again, if an image that&#8217;s different from you&#8217;ve got<br />your featured image, you go and you, you pa paste the URL into Twitter or into Slack, and you<br />get that little preview card, that&#8217;s your open graph image.<br />Twitter now has Twitter cards, which is their version. And so again, having different, different<br />versions generated for all of these things. And some of this I think we can do even behind the<br />scenes, which I think will be really, really neat. And then some of this I think could be, and then<br />it&#8217;s like, [00:46:00] so maybe that&#8217;s where, you know, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re, we haven&#8217;t yet talked about.<br />I mean, we&#8217;re not, we&#8217;re not ready yet to talk about business models and that kind of thing, but<br />hypothetically, a. Beginner version that just does a couple of the basic things. Here&#8217;s a<br />shareable image. Um, or here&#8217;s the, the open graph image for every post, every product<br />automatically generated, done. Um, and that&#8217;s not necessar.<br />That&#8217;s maybe something that people can set and forget kind of thing. But then we&#8217;re also talking<br />about, in my mind at least, we&#8217;re talking about something that approaches more of a Canva kind<br />of functionality for marketers. So it&#8217;s like, yes, the, the basics are covered, the incoming stuff is<br />covered, or the quick share, uh, in Slack preview is covered.<br />Um, but then talking about, you know, saying, okay, now I need the list of assets that I&#8217;ve<br />[00:47:00] predefined, I wanna slide for, um, you know, for social medias. Cuz it&#8217;s like, and if<br />you. If you&#8217;re doing it right, air quotes, right? You are not posting about a, a blog post once you<br />are not, uh, putting an image into or putting a product into woo commerce, tweeting about it<br />once and then hoping that it sells a gajillion, you are again, creating a campaign that says, okay,<br />you know, over the next six months, tweet about this every couple of days, every then, every<br />few days in it, every once a week.<br />And you sort of, you might peter off, but there&#8217;s this arc and you want those images to be<br />potentially to be different every time. And so it&#8217;s like, could you generate a bunch of images that<br />then get cued, um, you know, on all different platforms. And so it&#8217;s like potentially you&#8217;re talking<br />about, um, oh, I think the other neat thing that you mentioned in a previous conversation was<br />like, Answer a few questions, [00:48:00] right?<br />So it&#8217;s like word w WordPress is already gonna ask you for an excerpt fine. But it&#8217;s like, what are<br />three bullet points? What are two or three quotes? And then if it auto-generated a whole bunch<br />of images that had the quotes, that had the, um, oh, you know what, uh, uh, what&#8217;s analogous?<br />Like there&#8217;s, um, what&#8217;s it called?<br />Um, I have a book marked, um, avatar Image. Photo.<br />Cory Miller: Oh, yeah. Avatars.<br />Corey Maass: So there&#8217;s, um, yeah. Avatars. And so basically kind of creating little avatar<br />images for, um,<br />Cory Miller: I mean, profile cards, you know, like, right.<br />Corey Maass: So yeah. So p fp maker.com. P fp maker mm-hmm. Profile pick maker. Is what<br />it&#8217;s short for, right? But you upload a photo of yourself, it, it [00:49:00] strips the background out,<br />and then it, and then it just delivers you a page full of avatars.<br />So it&#8217;s your photo over and over again, but all these different funky backgrounds. And so you<br />scroll through them and you&#8217;re like, Ooh, I like that one. I like that one. I like that one. Um, I<br />think, yeah, go to my Twitter account and you&#8217;ll see one, and I use this to just like, I go, I upload<br />this to, we&#8217;ve looked at the, um, sticker mule background remover kind of thing.<br />Um, and I think there&#8217;s, remove.bg was one that I just found recently. That&#8217;s a great r l. But so<br />it&#8217;s like you create an image, you take an image of yourself, you use a tool to strip the<br />background, and then you upload it here. And now you&#8217;ve got, you know, a dozen or two or<br />three dozen different backgrounds and they&#8217;ve got ones with palm trees and the Eiffel Tower,<br />which is fun, right?<br />But so picturing like, You know, you write a blog post, you create a new Woo commerce product,<br />you go, you, you hit publish. And, and then, you know, our plugin essentially says, okay,<br />[00:50:00] you&#8217;re ready to create marketing assets. Um, what do you want to create today?</p>



<p>Twitter, Instagram, you know, and then, great, what&#8217;s, what&#8217;s the headline, which we can auto,<br />auto pull.<br />Um, what&#8217;s the excerpt? We, again, we can auto pull, um, featured image to start with, right?<br />But maybe you wanna upload other ones. Um, what are three bullet points? What are some pull<br />quotes? What are some benefi, you know, we can sort of customize a questionnaire that says,<br />fill these in, generate. And then now you&#8217;ve got essentially a matrix that&#8217;s like, you know, an<br />image for Twitter, an image for Facebook, an image for do, do, do, do.<br />And going across. You&#8217;ve got quote, quote, Bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, style, style,<br />style, um, you know, light mode, dark mode, play with fonts kind of thing. Um mm-hmm. You<br />know, and it, and so you suddenly, you&#8217;ve got a catalog of generated relevant images designed<br />to go on a bunch of different platforms and you&#8217;d [00:51:00] go, okay, yep, this one works.<br />This one works, this one&#8217;s silly. Ignore it, you know, whatever. Um, but<br />Cory Miller: so in, yeah, so in this, um, I went to the ChatGPT my researcher Yep. And, um,<br />image SEO came out and I was like, okay, if I&#8217;m embodying, um, I&#8217;m trying to do this, I&#8217;m<br />publishing site content in order to get ranked in Google. And you get on here, if you&#8217;ve done all<br />the work to do an SEO o keyword blog post, you&#8217;re using WordPress.<br />Great platform to do that. You go what was be one extra while you&#8217;re already there to get a little<br />bit extra stuff. Mm-hmm. And this Image SEO thing popped up in the list that I asked. Mm-hmm.<br />And it&#8217;s kind of compelling. Um,<br />and I read something just a second ago, uh, and I checked out your profile maker too. That&#8217;s<br />super cool. [00:52:00] Um, half of all Google searches end on the searcher. So wait, I&#8217;m sorry. I<br />thought I was saying how, how big SEO image SEO is, but we&#8217;re kind of saying that with the<br />social images too, is you&#8217;ve got this thing, there&#8217;s ways you can distribute your content in a way<br />out to the different platforms.<br />But I go Google too. Like I image should be, if we land on this should be a part of this<br />conversation. Mm-hmm. Because then you&#8217;re going, okay, ex. I mean, what if you could take<br />your blog posts, they get all this traffic and increase it by 10%? That&#8217;s a headline. Wow. Or the,<br />the product. So, you know, well, like you talked about e-commerce, um, what if there&#8217;s a way to<br />generate, easily an image that could be feature post featured image post or [00:53:00]<br />something in, in the thing.<br />But it also gets some SEO ranking when they&#8217;re going, and I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t do this myself, but,<br />um, I don&#8217;t look for images in Google necessarily, but it just compelling to kind explore that. Do<br />you? Okay. Yeah.<br />Corey Maass: Like we talked about, I think, I think it would be really interesting to know, like, I, I<br />make the assumption that Google looks at images more than alt tag, title tag.<br />Like, I think we&#8217;re to the point. I, I, I.<br />Safe assumption, I don&#8217;t know. Um, but I assume that Google can, if they look at a blog post,<br />they look at the image, they read the alag, but then they actually parse the image and say, yes,<br />this is in fact an image of a sunset when we&#8217;re talking about places to vacation. I don&#8217;t know if<br />that&#8217;s true. I&#8217;d love to find out if that&#8217;s [00:54:00] true.<br />But it&#8217;s like, so if you have an image that has words on it, I mean, at this point when I open an<br />image with words on it in, you know, Mac preview or Microsoft Paint, the words are editable. So<br />the, uh, algorithm for parsing text in an image is so commonplace now that it&#8217;s built into the, the<br />free image editor on, on Mac Os.<br />So I have to assume that it&#8217;s that pervasive everywhere. So, Um, you know, so is there a, an<br />SEO benefit to having words in an image that then gets shared? Um mm-hmm. Or no?<br />Cory Miller: Well, I mean, I would go, if you&#8217;re gonna post an image, you know, your tourism,<br />your e-commerce shop, you&#8217;re, why not? You&#8217;ve already got the images there.<br />Yeah. Um, you should be doing some image sto. I mean, that&#8217;s just easy, you know, a little bit<br />more effort and you&#8217;re able to, [00:55:00] I don&#8217;t know, cast a net water, but I go, if you&#8217;re gonna<br />post, uh, I don&#8217;t know, air compressors in somebody&#8217;s trying to find, you know, whatever the<br />reason they might be looking for that.<br />But you post a picture of the image compressor, that&#8217;s one thing. But I&#8217;ve seen more images too<br />come up where it&#8217;s like, put a little bit of text on there or it branded, you know, or I don&#8217;t know. I<br />like that mindset of going, how do we help them get a little bit more. Um, reach from something<br />they&#8217;re probably already doing.</p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, right. I googled how to do image seo and one of the results that came up,<br />so the first sponsored post, uh, is the, the image next to it is dude on laptop. The, the image<br />adds nothing to the headline, how to optimize images for websites. And [00:56:00] there&#8217;s a<br />picture of a dude with a, with a laptop, no value, no context, like if that image came outta<br />context, there&#8217;s nothing there.<br />Scroll down, um, to another one. 10 steps to optimize images for seo, and next to it is a card<br />that has. People, you know, a little graphic of people. Awesome. But it&#8217;s in, in text, even though<br />the image is this big in text that almost fills the card. It has the same headline, 10 steps to<br />optimize images for seo.<br />And there&#8217;s a little logo of the website that it&#8217;s on, and if I click on it and it gets bigger, there&#8217;s the<br />subtitle that&#8217;s like, you know, who&#8217;s who. It&#8217;s by when it was posted. Um, you know, and it&#8217;s like<br />right there. That&#8217;s the image that we&#8217;re talking, we&#8217;re talking about generating, but somebody<br />had to go in and create that card.<br />Well, so I figure if, if, if the, if the third result for searching for Google for [00:57:00] Image SEO<br />is an article about optimizing images for seo, and they include an image that has words on it.<br />You know, and, and like, I mean, we we&#8217;re talking about Google, you know, the, the automation,<br />the bots, the algorithms, the, you know, the ai, whatever. But I mean, the obvious benefit is of<br />just human stuff is obvious. Like putting something on Twitter, an image that has words rather<br />than an image of just a dude on a laptop.<br />Yeah. Obvi, you know, obvious value, but, well, but we do, I thought about Pinterest.<br />Cory Miller: Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh yeah. It&#8217;s, I forget about it all the time, but I mean, there&#8217;s so<br />many that go, like, it&#8217;s a pin and you&#8217;re looking for stuff and mm-hmm. You know, taking, it&#8217;s a<br />way to get a tra traffic back to your post about it.<br />Well put enough detail that entices them to come over. Yep. Um, okay. I wanna get back to<br />[00:58:00] this. Okay. I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m doing a post and, and may, maybe there&#8217;s others, but I think about<br />just. I spent my career with the organic SEO content, um, and I get somebody to the site, and<br />that&#8217;s the first part of the big, the whole process, just getting someone to the site.<br />Um, it talked about like popups help you, you know, do that. Mm-hmm. There&#8217;s inbound content,<br />like now that we have patterns within Gutenberg, code editor, block editor, like inserting<br />something called a action within that. Um, my traditional has been get &#8217;em on the site and give<br />them some offer that fills irresistible discount, ebook, lead magnet, you know, opt into the<br />newsletter thing.<br />Corey Maass: Yep.[00:59:00]<br />And I&#8217;m, and I, what I&#8217;m thinking is, Sim similar to our previous conversations. You know, it&#8217;s<br />gonna take a handful of conversations to continue to unearth all of these possibilities, right?<br />This list, which already is 10 points long, is gonna be a lot longer. And so I want some<br />confirmation, like there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s an, to me, there&#8217;s an obvious benefit of like what I just<br />described.<br />I&#8217;m seeing a card, a text on it that somebody had to generate. Do we, can we confirm that your<br />average team of one a person who&#8217;s blogging, um, recipe, ooh, recipe cards, um, do they.<br />[01:00:00] More of these images generated and or are they already trying to generate these<br />images? Are they, you know, is, is the average, um, person, you know, a team of one or two,<br />um, who&#8217;s got a, a YouTube vlog or a recipe blog or whatever.<br />Are they posting their article with the recipe? And then what are the next steps they take? Like,<br />that&#8217;s the broad question. Do they then go generate images to then put on socials and how do<br />they schedule, you know, all that stuff? What are the images that they actually care about? Um,<br />to me the, the gut assumption is there are enough people doing something as a next step.<br />And so I&#8217;m inclined to. Um, again, get to a point where I&#8217;ve essentially solved a problem for<br />generating something. And to me, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m, I have no problem solving this for me [01:01:00] and<br />you to start with. Mm-hmm. Um, where I&#8217;m generating my images from my music blog, I&#8217;m<br />generating a couple of basic templates for Instagram, whatever, me as a musician to promote.<br />Um, again, I&#8217;m looking at my clients like, what do they need? So a basic Twitter image with a<br />headline that has a logo on it. Um, and then for you, the post status, um, banners make, how do<br />we make them all look the same? So again, a logo and, you know, if, if these are all, um, I think<br />what we looked at, right? Were profiles of people.<br />So it&#8217;s upload a picture of the person, post status logo on the left, maybe their name and, um,<br />you know, and, and something from the, you know, and, and then. And then it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, to me, it&#8217;s,</p>



<p>it&#8217;s up to, again, we&#8217;re looking for feedback and or you doing some interviews to find out like,<br />yes, everybody, everybody wants Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, [01:02:00] LinkedIn, like the<br />obvious socials.<br />Um, or yes, people desperately wish that there were slides. Like, I love your interest in slides,<br />but you&#8217;re the only person I&#8217;ve ever heard of that says that. Um, which doesn&#8217;t dismiss it. It just<br />means like, that&#8217;s not the circle I&#8217;m in, right? So, um, yeah, that&#8217;s, to me, that&#8217;s not something we<br />want to generate first, but go find me 10 people that are gonna find that interesting.<br />Or if I get you to a point where you can sit down and generate pro templates yourself, you&#8217;ll be<br />like, cool, let me go build a slide one, because that&#8217;s what I want. And then, and then cuz it&#8217;s like<br />once, it&#8217;s kind of like Canva, like, you know, that they have somebody on staff whose job it is to<br />just crank out templates mm-hmm.<br />To solve all these little problems. Oh, whoops. We don&#8217;t have one for podcasts. Great. 3000 by</p>



<ol start="3000">
<li>Go, go generate that. Oh, there you go. Podcast. Um, yeah. Add that to your list. Um, or<br />we don&#8217;t, you know, [01:03:00] people are posting record their, their new album on, on<br />Bandcamp. What, how do you know an image generator for Bandcamp that I&#8217;m talking about<br />back to Canva?<br />It&#8217;s like they, because they&#8217;re going, they&#8217;re going inch deep, mile wide, you know. Yeah. So<br />they, they want one of everything, but there&#8217;s, you know, and for them, there&#8217;s s e o value, like,<br />you know, there&#8217;s a landing page for every single template they have. Because that way<br />anybody who&#8217;s googling for anything, you know, album cover template, they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re hoping to<br />pop up.<br />Mm-hmm. We&#8217;ll get there once we have the delivery system for templates, essentially. Um, and<br />I&#8217;m not saying we necessarily want to, like, we don&#8217;t wanna start there, like let&#8217;s find some clear<br />answers of, of what templates to build first, what, what problems to solve first.<br />Cory Miller: I, I&#8217;m still, uh, still so compelled by the slide content and I put in the crazy ideas<br />column Here is, uh, LinkedIn [01:04:00] slide content.<br />So the AJ told me about, find this link for you. Um, this service, it&#8217;s like a LinkedIn. You&#8217;ve seen<br />this on Instagram too. Um, I&#8217;ll find it. It&#8217;s a LinkedIn image carousel creator. You put your tweet in<br />and it&#8217;ll give you the, the slide content. Oh, Uhhuh. You know, when I tested that on LinkedIn<br />several years ago, my slide content got way more views than anything else I was doing.<br />And, uh, so I think even like for LinkedIn, um, you think about it, it&#8217;s like busy professionals used<br />to a common language of slides. Yep. Uh, and then being able to quickly get the information<br />without having to go through 1500 words. Yep. It&#8217;s still compelling to me.<br />Corey Maass: Um, well, and, and a, a neat coincidence, right?<br />I was like everybody else, I&#8217;m looking at, um, Twitter threads [01:05:00] about chat g p t<br />prompts. Um, or you know, what, what are 10 neat things that have happened in the 48 hours<br />since they released ChatGPT four, um, you know, people have generated re had it generate a<br />working version of pong, uh, in 60 seconds. I&#8217;d mean ridiculous things.<br />But one of the things that I saw was that I, that I was like, oh, this is actually relevant to the<br />world. Um, other than recreating pong, um, Is somebody dumped in an article and said, make,<br />make 10 slides. And it did. And I, yeah, they&#8217;re not styled or anything, but it&#8217;s just, here are the<br />bullet points that you&#8217;d wanna put on each.<br />So it&#8217;s like, uh, you know, have this talk to AI that then gen, you know, write a blog post, click a<br />button, chat, g p t or some other AI generates the slide content. We generate the slide images.<br />Yeah. Yeah. Holy crap.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. On that [01:06:00] link too for you.<br />Corey Maass: Um, okay, so we&#8217;re over an hour. Where do we go? What&#8217;s next? How do we<br />start?<br />What do you wanna do? What are you gonna do today? Um, what do you want me to do? Who<br />are we gonna talk to? How are we gonna get clients? I think,<br />Cory Miller: I think, um, one area to explore is, um, talking to content journey. Seeing the output<br />of what they&#8217;re doing, asking about the problems and challenges they have in that process for<br />their clients.<br />Um, I just forgot, I think there&#8217;s an opportunity here to potentially innovate in this of here&#8217;s how<br />this is going, here&#8217;s how people do, what is the way to help you stand out? Hmm. So the<br />standout, and that&#8217;s why I say innovate, not just helping cure the workflow issue, but I think<br />[01:07:00] one thing I wanna really explore this time is can we innovate with something?</li>
</ol>



<p>That&#8217;s where I think the slide content, you know, whether it&#8217;s a valid thing or not, is in that realm<br />of they&#8217;re doing something. What&#8217;s way, one way that could help that content stand out even<br />more. It, it includes social images, it includes STO image, SEO and stuff like that. Um, I was<br />like, Lindsay has a mental health treatment center client.<br />And, and that&#8217;s probably one of their best case studies because they took a, aside from, you<br />know, rarely getting any content to, uh, tenant, I mean considerable. And it drove a lot of<br />business for &#8217;em. And, uh, you think about it, like I, I, I remember talking to him cuz I did some<br />consulting with them, with the client and they&#8217;re trying to find images.<br />That&#8217;s another issue we&#8217;ve talked about, but it&#8217;s out, that&#8217;s out there. It&#8217;s for somebody else&#8217;s<br />saw potentially. But you go, if they&#8217;re doing the image, what&#8217;s something that could help that<br />stand out? And it&#8217;s maybe a pull quote. [01:08:00] Mm-hmm. You know, from it or something like<br />that. That&#8217;s where I want to dig in is, um, I&#8217;ll talk to Emily over there.<br />Um, And, uh, ask some of that. They&#8217;ve got another service called my marketing assistant too.<br />And I&#8217;ll ask, what are some of the anonymized, um, client requests they get? Yeah, sure. They<br />do have a podcaster in their beta program. Um, prolific podcaster who uses a lot of the<br />distributed media. Um, like I think he probably uses his website as the base, but, um, a lot of the<br />requests he&#8217;s getting is, you know, create the thumbnails for those things that they do, use those<br />tools that we talked about.<br />But, uh, I think one thing that might give us an edge on this is just like creating a new standard<br />where everybody&#8217;s going like, whoa, whoa, how&#8217;d they do that? I want that too. Like I was telling<br />you about the Casto little tip box and stuff. [01:09:00] Um, so that&#8217;s what I would like to explore<br />in this and then just understand their process a little bit better.<br />And what would be something that doesn&#8217;t take a lot of time. But then enhances uh, the content<br />and makes it stand out a little bit more. And I mean, it could be that whole call to action thing,<br />you know? Um, like a, being able to stylize some, you know, for the treatment center it&#8217;s call us.<br />Cuz if they call, if someone calls the treatment center, they can really help them and understand<br />what the right fit is and all that kinda stuff.<br />So their call to action is, you know, I think it still is the case, but if they get a phone call, that&#8217;s<br />great. That&#8217;s where they want to be. And then that turns over their sales operation. I&#8217;m trying to<br />think of another client. Um, there&#8217;s a lot of b2b, so, um, B2B there too. That seems like<br />[01:10:00] another area where maybe big companies have innovated with the B2B space.<br />Let me put that in here cause I don&#8217;t want to drop this. Like, I have a friend that has a<br />manufacturing company. He does the air condit, the cooling compressor stuff. He remanufacture<br />them. And, uh, I mean, there&#8217;s a space with people with money, um, and it&#8217;s business money.<br />They go, oh, if it helps increase whatever their KPI is.<br />I mean, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s pretty big.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. And I&#8217;ve got, I was just pinging, um, people within my client teams of like,<br />okay, who generates social media content so that I can line up an interview, talk to them about,<br />okay, what&#8217;s your process? Um, and I, and what&#8217;s kind of neat is, is again, I&#8217;ve got. It&#8217;s<br />technically the same, same [01:11:00] client, but I&#8217;ve got two websites, two teams that approach<br />things very differently.<br />One is, um, a lot more tech savvy and a lot more, um, trendy or, or, you know, they are active on<br />TikTok. We are advertising on TikTok, stuff like that. And the other one is, is a fairly traditional<br />news content magazine. Um, and, uh, with, and the, and the team is a lot less technical and we,<br />and we don&#8217;t need to be nearly as cutting edge or edge or trendy.<br />Um, and so I&#8217;m, I&#8217;ve kind of got a young hip social media marketer wizard, and then I&#8217;ve also got<br />people that are like, I write the article and then I go put it on Twitter. Um, and, and so I can kind<br />of see how, how two of these very different approaches go about solving more or less the same<br />problem. Yeah.<br />Cory Miller: And that featured image summary card type thing I think is still [01:12:00] really<br />compelling. I&#8217;m gonna highlight that. Where&#8217;s that? Yeah, I,<br />Corey Maass: I, that&#8217;s a very quick, easy win for anybody, not for us specifically. It&#8217;s like make<br />your featured image more compelling and, and much more valuable when shared.<br />Cory Miller: And because again, you know, look at outputs for that, you go, well that&#8217;s a<br />Pinterest thing. I mean, maybe that doesn&#8217;t get pinned, but it&#8217;s a social card. It could have<br />possibilities for the Pinterest stuff. It&#8217;s a visual thing that en might entice someone to go, oh,<br />that&#8217;s interesting. Um, and that stuff like to just do that pull image from post add overlay of.</p>



<p>There you go. Print, you know, I mean, as simple as that with the brand logo. Yep. Dacon or<br />something like that. Yep,<br />Corey Maass: yep. [01:13:00] Okay. Yeah. And there&#8217;s, and there&#8217;s, yeah, and there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a<br />couple of plugins out there that do something that touch on that. Um, and I&#8217;ve, I messed around<br />with one, not the other of the two that I know of, but they, they were, at least at the time, were,<br />were limited to generating, um, an open graph image.<br />I was like, generate image, paste it into Slack, you see the image. And I, and I was like, great,<br />but I, where do I write? Click Save as so that I can go post it to Twitter. Mm-hmm. It&#8217;s like, oh,<br />you know, it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s just in, it&#8217;s in your media library. It&#8217;s like, okay, well, And then<br />also what about all these other solutions or other scenarios?<br />Um, for me, I was just originally thinking the big socials, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,<br />Instagram. The big difference being 16, nine or square. But now we&#8217;re talking about, it&#8217;s like,<br />yeah, either easy ways to generate multiple variations and [01:14:00] stuff. It&#8217;s like this could go<br />a lot, a lot further. Um, so, but it&#8217;s, but I definitely, you know, there&#8217;s to talk about, you know,<br />people talk about competition.<br />It&#8217;s like, oh, the competition is Photoshop, Canva, um, nothing, nothing is always a, a<br />competitor. Um, you know, but also I, you know, there are other WordPress plugins that do<br />touch on this, so we&#8217;ll have to do a little research there too.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, like the nothing part is me. Um, I created a blog post and then it&#8217;d be<br />probably nice to have some visual.<br />Icon, thumbnail featured image that, um, highlight some points in there, but, um, okay. That&#8217;ll be,<br />mine is exploring that with, uh, I&#8217;ll start with Emily cause she&#8217;s doing a lot of the team interface,<br />[01:15:00] cl team, client interface stuff. She seemed a pretty good volume of work. I like the<br />marketing angle. How do we, cuz that could go across any of these potential avatars if we&#8217;re<br />helping them do better marketing, um, redistribution, that&#8217;s the social images of seo, all that kind<br />of stuff.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. Um, well, and um, again, I,<br />I wanna say I put my foot down cuz I think that&#8217;s a hilarious phrase. In a Mad Men 1960s<br />husband sort of way. I don&#8217;t make me put my foot down. Um, but I, I, I want to, I very adamantly<br />wanna draw the line at doing the posting or interacting with the socials. Um, other than like, we<br />can have a button that says, post this to Twitter and it just links, you know, we&#8217;ll throw you over<br />there kind of thing.<br />Cuz I&#8217;ve actually even, I [01:16:00] built a plugin at one point that you could queue up tweets,<br />but it&#8217;s like, it worked. But, you know, with all the drama around Twitter, a p i lately, let alone for<br />the last Yeah. 10 years, like, I don&#8217;t want to get into that. But, um, you know, one, one of the, we<br />were talking about. What are we talking about?<br />We must have been talking about, um, integration points with other tools, um, for Crop Express<br />anyway, it&#8217;s like, so if we generate images and then, and then I, you know, let&#8217;s, we can look at,<br />um, auto, you know, if you generate an, an open graph image that Yost automatically picks that<br />up. Um, so there&#8217;s an integration point.<br />Um, I use Buffer to post to mild my socials. Maybe they have an API or an integration point. So<br />it&#8217;s like we can, you know, there&#8217;s gonna be a potential for not only generating the images, but at<br />least getting them to the services that use those images. I don&#8217;t wanna become those [01:17:00]<br />services, but you know, there&#8217;s, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve got an opportunity there too.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. Okay. I put integrations with SEO plugins. Um,<br />That, that question<br />when I talk to Emily, I&#8217;ll ask, um, what, what are the common goals that they&#8217;re, are they trying to<br />push to a phone number? Are they trying to push to, um, an email list? It&#8217;s probably one of those<br />two, I would guess is building the appeal, unless social start<br />Corey Maass: higher up. Do they even, you know, are they thinking that strategically, like, not to<br />say the agency [01:18:00] isn&#8217;t or shouldn&#8217;t, but as a client, like if a client comes to &#8217;em as like,<br />we need images for Twitter, like, because everybody else does or because you under, you<br />know, they understand.<br />It&#8217;s the value in including a phone number.<br />Cory Miller: Now I do know, I do know, um, a lot of the clients they work with, and these are not<br />WordPress or tech people, um, social is hot, you know?</p>



<p>Corey Maass: Sure. Um, social hot, why, I guess, right? Mm-hmm. Cynically, are they doing it<br />because everybody tells them to, you know, are there, are there teenage kids telling them, dad,<br />you&#8217;ve gotta get your, um, shoe com, you know, your air compressor company on the tos.<br />And dad goes, okay, son, great, I&#8217;ll do that. You know, or, or are they measuring? [01:19:00] You<br />know, are they like, what, where does our traffic come from? Oh, we sell most of our air<br />compressors on Twitter, but not, or probably Facebook, but not on Twitter, and we&#8217;ve never.<br />Sold anything off of Insta, you know what I mean?<br />Like, I&#8217;m curious if, if, if, how companies are thinking about these, what am I trying to say? We<br />know in, especially in the context of this conversation, that there&#8217;s a potential to turn these pat<br />turn to turn passive images into valuable calls to action. Mm-hmm. To actually generate, you<br />know, it&#8217;s like I post an image, I post, I post something on Twitter.<br />It sucks In the featured image. The featured image is, you know, a pretty sunset. It, it might draw<br />a human&#8217;s attention, but that&#8217;s very different than again the card. Uh, the [01:20:00] s e o card<br />that I saw here, that&#8217;s like words that are also drawing me in to like a phone number. So it&#8217;s like,<br />wow, I don&#8217;t even have to click through.<br />To, uh, to find out a phone number. I&#8217;m just dialing eight eighty eight, et cetera. Mm-hmm. So it&#8217;s<br />like there&#8217;s, I, I&#8217;m curious how people are thinking about it, if they&#8217;re thinking about it, because if<br />not, like there&#8217;s great opportunity to ask for us to do education, um mm-hmm. And, or cuz it&#8217;s<br />like, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve talked about, this is the first time you&#8217;ve mentioned phone numbers.<br />Um, so it&#8217;s like, you know, our, our default is like, oh, this is gonna go on Twitter and it&#8217;s gonna<br />look pretty, it&#8217;s gonna be the title of the post. Um, you know, with bullet points. It&#8217;s a tldr, but like<br />what you just said I think is amazing of like, imagine if for a small business, if it included the<br />phone number, the logo, and the phone number.<br />So it&#8217;s like nobody ever, or the address, right? Mm-hmm. So people don&#8217;t see it on Facebook or<br />see it on Twitter and they don&#8217;t even have to click through.<br />Cory Miller: [01:21:00] Mm-hmm. Then it&#8217;s an ad, right? Like, Retail shop coming up with<br />something, they&#8217;ve got an event, a coupon or something that could, they&#8217;re posting on their<br />website, so it&#8217;s RSVPs and then having a card that they could just easily go export or, you know,<br />save or whatever it is, and then they can go post that.<br />Corey Maass: How is the, we have a, a pie shop in town. How are they generating the image<br />for their daily specials? Are they going into Canva every day?<br />Yep. The sandwich shop, the, you know, all the food trucks that are posting their location, and<br />this is taking it way out of the context of a post.[01:22:00]<br />Which is where something like Canva makes more sense. Like people are doing it, generating<br />an image unto itself. Right. My friend, um, Mike has the epic food truck that makes unbelievable<br />brisket and meat filled happiness, um, out of his food truck. Um, so he has to consistently post<br />where he&#8217;s at, what are today&#8217;s specials, and this is, and I&#8217;ll post them on the local Facebook<br />groups and people go running us too.<br />So I&#8217;m like, okay, I should ask him how he&#8217;s generating and I need to think back. It&#8217;s like, is he<br />generating images? Is he upload? I kind of feel like he&#8217;s uploading the same logo every time<br />and then writing the content, but, and so is there value in all of the content being on the image?<br />I don&#8217;t know. I have to think about that.<br />I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;d wanna include the words [01:23:00] too, but, right. Yeah. I might have a<br />conversation with him.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, I think that&#8217;d be great. Um, I&#8217;ll do one with, uh, Emily, see where that goes.<br />And then I, I just shared the, uh, this whiteboard with you in Slack. Great. I have a friend.<br />Thanks so much. This is, uh, this is good stuff.<br />Okay. So I got my marching orders to talk to Emily about that, see what they&#8217;re doing, see if<br />there&#8217;s ideas to like, drive the conversions that they need for post, explore some of the eBooks<br />too. I put course up here cause I think that&#8217;s another thing. Yep. But, um, yeah, I was thinking<br />that too.<br />Corey Maass: Okay. Um, yeah, and I think I&#8217;m gonna talk to, I&#8217;ve got one or two people to talk<br />to.<br />Um, and I think, I think I will try to, I, well, I, like I said earlier, like I do want to. Make sure that<br />I&#8217;m wrapping up Crop express properly. [01:24:00] Um, but then, you know, out of sheer<br />excitement, I imagine I&#8217;ll reopen the, the plugin that I&#8217;d started to build and see if I can get it<br />working enough to send it to you.</p>



<p>Okay, cool. All right.<br />Cory Miller: Thanks dude. Talk to you soon. I&#8217;ll be talking to you. Okay.</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 12:51:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:114:"Post Status: Jesse Friedman on raising the WP hosting standard across the industry with WP.cloud-Post Status Draft";s: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=149053";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:125:"https://poststatus.com/jesse-friedman-on-raising-the-wp-hosting-standard-across-the-industry-with-wp-cloud-post-status-draft/";s: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:51702:"<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">In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/Professor">Jesse Friedman</a>, Head of <a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP Cloud</a>, joins <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> to provide valuable insights and strategies for improving infrastructure and service to deliver superior hosting. They also highlight how managed hosting can help businesses focus on their core operations while leaving the technical aspects to the experts. </p></div>


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<span class="span-reading-time rt-reading-time"><span class="rt-label rt-prefix">Estimated Reading Time:</span> <span class="rt-time"> 24</span> <span class="rt-label rt-postfix">minutes</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> is joined by <a href="https://twitter.com/Professor">Jess Friedman</a> from <a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP Cloud</a> discuss how hosting companies can improve their infrastructure and services to provide better performance and reliability to their customers. They also dive into the importance of customer support, the benefits of using managed hosting services, the ethics of data collection, and more. The experience and expertise offered are sure to inspire you to increase your standards of service</p>
