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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:59:"Do The Woo Community: Stepping Outside the WordPress Bubble";s: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=85084";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://dothewoo.io/stepping-outside-the-wordpress-bubble/";s: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:7217:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Over the years, certain people in our space have talked about stepping outside the WordPress bubble. I include myself in that group.</p>



<p>And with each iteration of the community, personally, I always feel like it&#8217;s something that is not only a good idea for us to think about but also a healthy way to broaden our thoughts and opinions. For some people, it&#8217;s a bit scary to do this because they find the bubble a comfort zone. Others are much more comfortable. And even more so, some step outside of it for good, which is often the best decision for them.</p>



<p>What does it mean to step outside the bubble? Well, it&#8217;s what you make it. Learning something new. Joining conversations that give you a more open mind. Or perhaps attending an event or conference that allows you to expand your scope on how you do business and who you do it with.</p>



<p>Some things to ponder.</p>



<p>One of the biggest traps in our space is our Slack channels, which are one of two things: an echo chamber or a place with like-minded people who follow a single path. Now, I am not saying don&#8217;t participate in these. Instead, I suggest you find additional avenues of conversation that are not just in compliance with how you feel or think about something in the community. Reaffirmation is helpful, but it can also get you stuck.</p>



<p>With that all said, let me share how we, as a community at Do the Woo, are trying to help you step outside the bubble with two shows.</p>



<p>Open Talk on Open Source. This is one of our newer shows that I have talked about a bit in the past. It is hosted by Robert Jacobi and Courtney Robertson, both avid open source proponents. The idea for the show was inside my head since last year.</p>



<p>What inspired me to pull it together was not only had I heard others talking about the need for this, but it also nagged at me. The fact that so many of us in the WordPress ecosystem love open source for the obvious reason but are not exposed to all the amazing projects around us that bring open source to the surface and also integrate or work alongside WordPress itself. As a result, this show is perfect for anyone who loves WordPress as an open-source project and wants to discover those projects outside our space and what they mean to you and the growth of open source.</p>



<p>Then we also have our new show about Scaling Enterprise. Working with the Scale Consortium, this show has also been in the works for quite some time and is now out in the wild with hosts Brad Williams, Karim Marucchi, and Tom Willmot. What makes this show unique is it&#8217;s broken up into two separate shows, The Buyer&#8217;s View and The Inside Track.</p>



<p>The Inside Track, which premiered yesterday, is more focused on WordPress in Enterprise. On the other hand, The Buyer&#8217;s View gives us a look at open source software beyond WordPress when it comes to enterprise. So essentially, you get the best of both worlds.</p>



<p>These two shows are examples of how we want to help you explore technology beyond the WordPress bubble. And I&#8217;m sure even within our other existing shows, you will find bits and pieces of it as well. Plus, I imagine you may find more about it on our new blog that is just around the corner.</p>



<p>Lastly, I would like to share my own experience that lends itself to events outside of WordPress. This last March, I attended CloudFest in Germany for the first time. It started with the Hackathon that led into the event. And yes, there was also a WordPress day. Something I believe you are going to see grow.</p>



<p>Now I know some people came only for that day, and I am hoping next March that they decide to stick around for the entire event. Now it is focused on technology in the cloud, so not everything may be of interest. But I can guarantee you that you will meet some amazing people with all sorts of talents and views that will make it worth the experience.</p>



<p>Myself, I used to go to these conferences in my other pre-WordPress life. And I was so happy that I stepped out of the bubble of WordCamps and experienced CloudFest. In fact, I was so impressed, chances are good I will be going again next March. So hope to see you there and if you have any questions about it, ping me.</p>



<p>Well, that is that. And as I said at the beginning, find your own paths to explore the tech communities outside of WordPress no matter what you do professionally in our space. Take some breaks from those Slack channels and reflect on the bigger picture. Give yourself some time to reevaluate how this may just make you happier and more flexible with your own ideas and thoughts. I have done this recently myself in a lot of different ways aside from what I have already mentioned around the podcast and events. Maybe that is something for another time.</p>



<p>So speaking of WordCamps, if you are going to WordCamp US, let&#8217;s connect or reconnect. I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing everyone and know that having a balance of inside and outside the bubble is nothing better than a happier frame of mind. So until the next time.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong>BobWP on Community, BobWP</strong> talks about the importance of stepping outside the WordPress bubble to broaden our thoughts and opinions.</p>



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



<p>The key takeaways from the transcript are:</p>



<p><strong>The Importance of Stepping Outside the Bubble</strong>: It&#8217;s beneficial to explore beyond the WordPress community to gain new perspectives, learn, and grow.</p>



<p><strong>Learning and Broadening Horizons</strong>: Engaging in new activities, joining diverse conversations, and attending different events can help broaden your scope and improve how you do business.</p>



<p><strong>Avoiding Echo Chambers</strong>: Participating in diverse conversations and exploring different avenues can prevent getting stuck in an echo chamber.</p>



<p><strong>Initiatives at Do the Woo</strong>: The community is encouraged to step outside the WordPress bubble through new shows like &#8220;Open Talk on Open Source&#8221; and &#8220;Scaling Enterprise,&#8221; which highlight technology beyond WordPress.</p>



<p><strong>Value of Events Outside WordPress</strong>: Attending events like CloudFest offers opportunities to meet diverse people and gain insights beyond the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p><strong>Personal Growth</strong>: Exploring outside familiar zones can lead to personal and professional growth, making one happier and more flexible in their ideas and thoughts.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/podcasts/open-talk-on-open-source/">Open Talk on Open Source</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/podcasts/scaling-enterprise-wordpress-and-open-source-software/">Scaling Enterprise, WordPress &amp; OSS</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/">CloudFest 2025</a></strong></li>
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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"WPTavern: #131 – Abraham Waita on Nurturing Young WordPress Enthusiasts in Uganda";s: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=158288";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/131-abraham-waita-on-nurturing-young-wordpress-enthusiasts-in-uganda";s: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:27109:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, nurturing young WordPress enthusiasts in Uganda.</p>



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



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



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Abraham Waita.</p>



<p>Abraham is a Woo Happiness Engineer at Automattic and is very active in the WordPress communities of both Kenya and Uganda. He&#8217;s recently given a talk at WordCamp Europe, which we discuss in this episode.</p>



<p>Abraham has been instrumental in rolling out WordPress to high schools in Uganda. Fostering a rapidly growing young WordPress community. His talk entitled, Diverse and Sustainable Future: How High School Teachers in Uganda are Nurturing a Young WordPress Community, shines a light on this initiative.</p>



<p>We explore the dynamics of the WordPress community in Uganda, it&#8217;s impressive growth and the challenges it has faced along the way. Abraham provides insights into how WordPress is being taught in high school, through the ICT curriculum, and the creative project students have undertaken.</p>



<p>He also discusses the importance of community support, including sponsorships and hardware donations, and how these contributions can immensely benefit the educational enterprise.</p>



<p>Towards the end of our conversation, we get into the broader impact of this initiative on students&#8217; futures, and how companies, or individuals, can sponsor this endeavor. If you&#8217;re passionate</p>



<p>about education, WordPress, or community growth, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Abraham Waita.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Abraham Waita. Hi Abraham.</p>



<p>[00:03:05] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Hey Nathan. I&#8217;ve just come from my talk and I&#8217;m feeling the nervousness is dying down, so I&#8217;m finally enjoying WordCamp Europe.</p>



<p>[00:03:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Have you just done it just now?</p>



<p>[00:03:13] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> A few hours ago, but the emotions leading to the talk were so high, so right now I&#8217;m just letting everything go like down.</p>



<p>[00:03:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m very impressed of anybody that can do a talk at an event like this because it must be very nerve wracking. And until it&#8217;s over, I guess you&#8217;re carrying it around until it&#8217;s actually finished. So well done, thank you.</p>



<p>That is actually the topic of the conversation today. We&#8217;re going to talk about the subject that you talked about on stage. But before we get into that, could you just introduce yourself. Maybe, I don&#8217;t know, a minute, thirty seconds. Just tell us who you are, where you live, who you work for, that kind of thing.</p>



<p>[00:03:46] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah, so, Abraham, I&#8217;m based in Nairobi, Kenya, but I&#8217;m actually active in two WordPress communities. That&#8217;s the WordPress community in Kenya, and the one in Uganda. And the funny fact is that I attend more WordCamps in Uganda than in Kenya. That&#8217;s why I am associated with the community in Uganda more than the one in Kenya. I work at Automattic as a Woo Happiness Engineer, so I&#8217;m usually supporting people using WooCommerce, specifically with, I help with payment issues and, outside that is when I go to do community work.</p>



<p>[00:04:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the talk that you did was entitled as follows, Diverse and sustainable future: How high school teachers in Uganda are nurturing a young WordPress community. And when I saw that title, I thought, well, I really want to know a little bit more about that. So that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve got you in to talk about today.</p>



<p>Can you just tell us a little bit about the community, the WordPress community in Uganda? Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Is it large? Is it small? The only point of reference that I&#8217;ve got is WordPress. I confess, I&#8217;ve never been to Uganda, I don&#8217;t know anything about it. I&#8217;m imagining quite a few of the people listening have also not been to Uganda. But I&#8217;d be just interested to hear, just tell us what it&#8217;s like over there for the WordPressers.</p>



<p>[00:04:59] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah. The community&#8217;s growing at a very high rate right now because we are rolling out WordPress to all high schools in Uganda, and all high schools combined have 1.4 million students. So as we introduce more of them to WordPress, the community keeps growing, and that&#8217;s one of the things we are having, is the surging numbers in attendees who want to come to WordCamps. Because the venues are now limited such that we have to introduce some sort of limitations to who can come. And as we look for bigger venues, the community&#8217;s growing very rapidly right now.</p>



<p>[00:05:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s interesting because that stands in stark contrast to where I am, which is the UK. When Covid came along, that kind of really did shutter the WordPress community down, and the events have not come back yet. But you have a very different experience in Uganda, so that&#8217;s really nice to hear. It&#8217;s growing, and in fact, at events, you&#8217;re turning people away because there&#8217;s not enough space in the venues. That&#8217;s absolutely fascinating.</p>



<p>Is it just WordPress, or is it open source in general? So for example, would I find, I don&#8217;t know if you know, but would I find a growing Drupal community as well, or is it uniquely WordPress?</p>



<p>[00:06:08] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> It&#8217;s mostly WordPress because it&#8217;s the tool that&#8217;s being broadcasted in high schools, like being spread out in high schools. So that&#8217;s the main focus for now. As we try to move into more schools with WordPress, we are getting more of that development in WordPress.</p>



<p>Maybe other CMSs will also grow as a result of people looking for alternatives, but for now it&#8217;s mostly WordPress that&#8217;s growing.</p>



<p>[00:06:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In the part of the world where I live, if children were to encounter WordPress, it would probably be because of a parent. As far as I&#8217;m aware, and forgive me if I&#8217;ve got this wrong, there&#8217;s no school program. I mean, maybe some ingenious teacher is offering a club after school, but as far as I&#8217;m aware, there&#8217;s no state sponsored, government led WordPress training. Is that what&#8217;s happening in Uganda? Is it officially inside the school time, it&#8217;s being taught as an actual lesson, or is it more end of the day club kind of thing?</p>



<p>[00:07:04] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> It&#8217;s taught in a subject called ICT, and it was open-ended for teachers to interpret how they would like to teach it, because the curriculum just said, we need your students to be able to come up with a project that solves problems in their communities. So initially how they were teaching that subject, the ICT subject, was with tools that could not meet this requirement. And so they ended up turning to WordPress, and that&#8217;s how, right now, you&#8217;ll find, yes, students are in a computer lab learning WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:07:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Got it. Okay, so it&#8217;s entirely up to the individual teacher how far they want to go with that. And they could ignore WordPress altogether, but it&#8217;s allowed, and many people are doing it. Why have they chosen WordPress in particular? Is it just because there is a community, and there&#8217;s understanding, broadly, of how it works?</p>



<p>[00:07:51] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> So, the biggest contributor was the, number one, it&#8217;s open source, and then the community involvement. So it&#8217;s now, let&#8217;s say, that there&#8217;s already a community around WordPress. There are WordCamps, there are meetup groups, so they&#8217;re not really starting from scratch if they want to spread it.</p>



<p>And those are some of the preexisting conditions that have made WordPress to grow quickly because you have sponsored WordCamps, you have preexisting meetup groups, and it&#8217;s from there that other things have come up. So we have moved from two active meetup groups to six, and most of the new ones are teacher led. They are using the meetup spaces to share knowledge to each other. And from the knowledge sharing, now the teachers move back to students, and the students get to benefit from what the teachers have learned. So it&#8217;s like a, not a food chain of knowledge, but yeah, something like that.</p>



<p>[00:08:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I understand. Yeah, so it&#8217;s kind of top down. It&#8217;s trickling down, yeah. And what kind of things are being taught? Because there&#8217;s just literally millions of things that you could teach people about WordPress. But, are you starting at the basics? Like how to install WordPress, here&#8217;s how to create a page. And just tell us what these curricular might look like.</p>



<p>[00:09:06] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Sure. So the initial point is usually getting WordPress installed, and due to internet challenges, it&#8217;s usually on local hosts and using XAMP. And once the students know how to install WordPress on local host, they are now introduced to building pages, posts, and then lastly plugins.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s from the plugins where the teachers now start stepping backwards, and they allow students to explore. So we have seen students who have come up with crazy projects because they went above and beyond in the exploration journey. So like, one of the projects, I ask the students, so how did you build this platform? You say, it allows students to filter the schools. And he was like, oh, I have plugins for this, and here I set up custom post types, I am using ACF something. And I was impressed because the teacher did not teach him that. He just went exploring, and from there, he got to know more than, let&#8217;s say, the teacher, and come up with huge projects.</p>



<p>[00:10:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There&#8217;s a lot of guided learning, but then also you are seeing the children are just taking it off in any direction. I mean, I guess if you teach any subject, a proportion of children will be disinterested, and I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s the case with WordPress. But there&#8217;s always going to be those who just hook into it and think, this is the best thing ever, and go off and explore and, as you said, start making things like custom post types, and what have you.</p>



<p>And I feel that, in the last few years, the way WordPress has gone since the advent of Gutenberg, the block editor, it&#8217;s made it much more powerful for a vanilla, non plugin WordPress, so just a vanilla install of WordPress. To get yourself something credible just with the block editor. So I imagine there&#8217;s a lot of experimentation with blocks and things like that as well.</p>



<p>[00:10:51] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah, actually one of the WordCamps I attended, the first session was covering blocks, and using Gutenberg to develop a functional site. And it&#8217;s from there that it&#8217;s like an entry point for beginners. Those are the learning points, what you can do with just a basic installation of WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:11:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, got it. Just to recap a little bit, you&#8217;ve got the meetups and there&#8217;s, now it&#8217;s gone from two to six, and at those you&#8217;ve got a lot of teachers attending as attendees to that event. And then they&#8217;re learning, and then they&#8217;re going back to their schools, and then they&#8217;re doing all these things. So it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s one curricular, there&#8217;s just multiple different ways that it&#8217;s being taught.</p>



<p>[00:11:32] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah. So it&#8217;s a total of about six sustainable initiatives, that the teachers are using to spread WordPress quickly, as quickly as possible to all schools, to teachers and to students.</p>



<p>[00:11:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you need more support in this endeavor? Is it growing at the point where you need to reach out and, I don&#8217;t know, maybe make it eight meet ups or twelve meet ups? And also, the finance of all of that because, although there&#8217;s a lot of voluntary time in, you know, you still have to do things like pay for the venue possibly, and things like that. Would you welcome some more support?</p>



<p>I imagine that there&#8217;ll be people listening into this podcast who maybe work for a company that&#8217;s got an initiative, that they may wish to contact you and discuss things. So are you looking for support, financial or otherwise?</p>



<p>[00:12:11] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Sure. We really are looking for all possible support. So mostly, if there are, let&#8217;s say more sponsors currently, the sponsors that are available, we really appreciate them, but we still require more assistance. So there are some areas we could really grow.</p>



<p>Number one is getting bigger venues. So, as I said, we now have to limit to around 200 students, but what if now we could allow a thousand students from different schools.</p>



<p>Another thing, we have competitions going on, and a rewarding factor for participating in a competition is you get a present or something. So in the past, I would like to give maybe a shout out to two companies who have given some presents in the past. We have Yoast, who gave a free SEO training to winners of one competition. Alongside wordpress.com, who had some swag for them as well. It&#8217;s also a motivating factor.</p>



<p>Apart from that, yeah, there&#8217;s something else called a sponsor in kind in Uganda. So it goes all the way from, like last time someone gave a router, a 4G router to give internet to the production team, to the attendees, so that there&#8217;s wifi. And that&#8217;s as little as it can be like, from just being an enabler of the basic services to, let&#8217;s say, being a sponsor at a given level. And, yeah, your funds will really go a long way in that event. Maybe lunch for the attendees, something else like that.</p>



<p>[00:13:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So before we end this podcast, I&#8217;ll make absolutely sure that we&#8217;ve got any links to any pages that you may wish to point people towards. But we&#8217;ll also make sure that your contact details are there, and i&#8217;m imagine that you&#8217;ll be happy to receive emails about this subject.</p>



<p>You mentioned about motivating factors. Is that an important part of it? When these children are turning up to learn, are they seeing it just, I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s a bit of fun, I can build a website, or is there more to it? Like, okay, this could be a job for me.</p>



<p>Is there a certain sense of it carrying through after school. I don&#8217;t know if you track that, or if it&#8217;s been going for long enough to see that, look what we did, we&#8217;ve now got, I don&#8217;t know, 100, 200, 300 people who are building websites for clients all over the world. Is it carrying on after school? Is it, sustainable?</p>



<p>[00:14:23] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Okay, so for carrying on, we are looking forward to the end of this year because that&#8217;s when the first cohort under the new curriculum will be examined. So when they go out, it&#8217;s the first group we will have coming out of high school with WordPress education. And then it&#8217;s, from there we can see whether they are taking it outside school. But from now, for the time being, yes, we have seen them taking some projects. So we have students who have built websites for their schools, where the schools didn&#8217;t have any websites, and now they have websites because the students learn how to use WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:14:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it is carrying on.</p>



<p>[00:14:58] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:14:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Definitely carrying on, but I guess only time will tell how that goes. But if you&#8217;re pushing a lot of children through the project, I&#8217;m sure that, in the end, it will have that effect.</p>



<p>How does the actual lesson look? I think you mentioned something like a computer lab, or something like that. Again, I&#8217;ve no idea what schools are equipped with in Uganda. So, is it a bit like a classroom environment, where there&#8217;s computers around the wall and you just begin, and you carry on from where you left last time? Or is it, everybody sit down, look at the whiteboard at the front, or the blackboard or whatever it may be, and I&#8217;m going to teach you this thing, and then you&#8217;ve got to go over and experiment with that? What does the actual lesson look like?</p>



<p>[00:15:31] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> As a requirement for the ICT, the schools are offering ICT, they require computer labs. So it&#8217;s up to them to know how to, let&#8217;s say, schedule the classes into smaller groups to fit the number of computers they have, so that each student can attend like practically a lesson. But during WordCamps, you&#8217;ll find most students don&#8217;t have laptops. So during WordCamps, we just have a projector screen, and if it&#8217;s a tutorial, we are taking them through, one student will actually be doing the practical bit of it. But the learning part, we use computer lab, mostly computer labs in their schools.</p>



<p>[00:16:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s difficult to sort of say, but where I come from in the UK, there&#8217;s a lot of laptops lying around. There&#8217;s many, many, laptops. I&#8217;m sure that quite a few of the children have got laptops, that&#8217;s not always the case.</p>



<p>Would you welcome anything like that? You know, do you need more actual hardware? You mentioned things like routers, and financial contributions and things. Anybody listening to this who might happen to have some of that stuff lying around, is that something you would welcome, or you&#8217;ve got to use certain things, and buy them through government channels, or what have you?</p>



<p>[00:16:35] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah, that would be really welcomed because one of the challenges is that there are schools who really can&#8217;t teach WordPress because they don&#8217;t have the basic requirement of a computer lab, because they don&#8217;t have laptops, they don&#8217;t have computers, they don&#8217;t have anything to teach this subject. So they are limited.</p>



<p>So the students in those schools unfortunately can&#8217;t benefit like the others. If there&#8217;s hardware support, computers, laptops, anything that can load WordPress installation, because it&#8217;ll be localised, it&#8217;s minimal resources. Anything like that could really go a long way in such schools.</p>



<p>[00:17:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Have you played with Playground?</p>



<p>[00:17:10] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Personally, not yet, but I would say it&#8217;s now a great thing, to have a quick installation of WordPress on the site. Although, in Uganda, for now it may be a challenge, because you need continuous connection, which the students may not have. That&#8217;s why, for now, they are still on XAMP and local host installations, something like that.</p>



<p>But, yes, that will be the future because the connectivity is coming and, yeah, we will have more opportunities to introduce students also to that. I also look forward to playing around with Playground.</p>



<p>[00:17:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s an amazing technology, and it feels that any part of the world, Uganda or anywhere else, it would be just such a superb tool for the classroom because you click a button, and four seconds, five seconds later, you have a WordPress installation.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a few little caveats around that. There&#8217;s a few things that you can&#8217;t do, but broadly speaking, it works.</p>



<p>At the moment, when you close the browser, it goes away. But in the near future, one of the developers in the project, I think there are three of them now, they&#8217;re going to make it persistent.</p>



<p>So, you close the browser, and then sometime later open the browser, and it will still be there. But of course, I guess one of the things with that is that then it&#8217;s still stuck on your computer, which is fine if you possess a computer, but if you go home and the computer was at school, you then can&#8217;t use it. But maybe in the future it will be able to be exported somewhere.</p>



<p>[00:18:32] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:18:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How does the sort of hosting aspect go? Because you mentioned that a child had built school website. Did school pay for the hosting of that? How did it all of that happen?</p>



<p>[00:18:41] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> So there&#8217;s a lot of voluntary efforts going on, and some companies offer free hosting if possible. Sometimes the schools pay for the hosting. So it&#8217;s a mix. Sometimes the schools will pay, sometimes a volunteer will just support them by hosting. So that&#8217;s one of the hosts supporting, or sponsoring in kind initiatives I was mentioning. You don&#8217;t have to give, let&#8217;s say, a financial contribution, but hosting a site is one of the contribution ways.</p>



<p>[00:19:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I mean, it all sounds absolutely amazing. It&#8217;s lovely to see a part of the world where WordPress is growing so rapidly. And I guess, you know, it&#8217;s from the endeavors of people like you that it&#8217;s all happening. So thank you for all of your hard work.</p>



<p>Can you mention any websites, or places we could go, organisations that we could find out about, that would enable us to find out more, but also maybe, I don&#8217;t know, send some sort of sponsorship, or donation, or something like that?</p>



<p>[00:19:35] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> You can, first of all, to reach out to the organisers of the different WordCamps, if you&#8217;d like to sponsor a WordCamp. You can go to central.wordcamp.org, and then you&#8217;ll find a listing of the upcoming WordCamps. And you&#8217;ll find, let&#8217;s say, in July, there&#8217;s a Uganda Websites competition. If you click on it, you can now find your way to the sponsor&#8217;s page, and sponsor directly from there.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to connect with the teachers association that has been behind all the efforts of all these outreach program in spreading WordPress to schools, you can first reach out to them on Twitter. They are @ICTTeachersUG, and their site is ictteachersug.net. And lastly, if you&#8217;d like me to connect you with, because there are so many other people involved, if you&#8217;d like me to connect you with, let&#8217;s say, whoever is leading the next meetup, or the next WordCamp, you can find me on LinkedIn as Abraham Waita, and I&#8217;ll be happy to link you.</p>



<p>[00:20:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure that all of those links go into the show notes. So if you go to wptavern.com/podcast, you&#8217;ll be able to find the episode there, and you can click on the links and hopefully connect with Abraham.</p>



<p>Thank you so much for chatting to me today. What an impressive community you&#8217;ve got over there. I hope it continues, and I hope you manage to teach more children as the days, and weeks, and months go by, all about the virtues of WordPress. Thank you very much.</p>



<p>[00:20:58] <strong>Abraham Waita:</strong> Thank you Nathan.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraham-waita/">Abraham Waita</a>.</p>



<p>Abraham is a Woo Happiness Engineer at Automattic and is very active in the WordPress communities of both Kenya and Uganda. He’s recently given a talk at WordCamp Europe, which we discuss in this episode.</p>



<p>Abraham has been instrumental in rolling out WordPress to high schools in Uganda, fostering a rapidly growing young WordPress community. His talk, entitled &#8220;Diverse and Sustainable Future: How High School Teachers in Uganda are Nurturing a Young WordPress Community,&#8221; shines a light on this initiative.</p>



<p>We explore the dynamics of the WordPress community in Uganda, its impressive growth, and the challenges it has faced along the way. Abraham provides insights into how WordPress is being taught in high schools through the ICT curriculum and the creative projects students have undertaken.</p>



<p>He also discusses the importance of community support, including sponsorships and hardware donations, and how these contributions can immensely benefit the educational enterprise.</p>



<p>Towards the end of our conversation, we get into the broader impact of this initiative on students&#8217; futures, and how companies or individuals can support this endeavour.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re passionate about education, WordPress, or community growth, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>WordCamp&#8217;s in Uganda 2024: <a href="https://lira.wordcamp.org/2024/">Lira</a> and <a href="https://jinja.wordcamp.org/2024/">Jinja</a></p>



<p>WordCamp&#8217;s in Kenya 2024: <a href="https://nairobi.wordcamp.org/2024/">Nairobi</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html">XAMP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/">ACF</a></p>



<p><a href="https://x.com/ICTTeachersUG">ICT Teachers Association of Uganda (ITAU)</a> on X</p>



<p><a href="https://www.ictteachersug.net/">ICT Teachers&#8217; Association of Uganda [ITAU]</a> website</p>



<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraham-waita/">Abraham on LinkedIn</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:99:"Do The Woo Community: Insights from the 2023 State of Enterprise WordPress Survey with Mario Peshev";s: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=85063";s: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://dothewoo.io/insights-from-the-2023-state-of-enterprise-wordpress-survey-with-mario-peshev/";s: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:47379:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-5 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Brad:<br />Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Enterprise WordPress Podcast, Scaling Enterprise. This is The Inside Track edition of the podcast, which I&#8217;m very excited to dig into. So on this show, we&#8217;re really digging into enterprise WordPress, of course, but really within the community, within WordPress, what&#8217;s happening, what&#8217;s going on with Enterprise? Who&#8217;s launching cool sites, what kind of crazy functionality or examples within the enterprise have we seen to really kind of validate what WordPress can do at scale within these large organizations? So I&#8217;m really excited to dig into a new show. So I have brought on a couple of my friends, good friends on the show. So let&#8217;s meet them and then we&#8217;ll dive right into it. First up, we got Mr. Tom over there at Human Made. Tom, why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you do, especially around the enterprise side of WordPress?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Sure. Well, if folks listen to the episode we put out a couple of weeks ago, which was with Karim, you might remember me from that. If not, plug, go and listen to it. It was a great episode. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Human Made. Also, one of the founding members of Scale Consortium. Been doing Enterprise WordPress for coming on 15 years or so. So got plenty of scars and stories to tell.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Lots of stories to tell. We can’t wait to get into some of those stories, the ones you’re allowed to share outside those NDAs. Right. And next up, of course, we have Mario. Mario, why don’t you introduce yourself.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Hey everyone. First off, pleased to be here. Great crowd. I’ve known you guys for over a decade now, maybe close to 15 years. My name is Mario Peshev. I run several different companies. One of them is DevriX, it’s a WordPress Boutique Agency, profiling in small and medium enterprises. Even though we work with some Fortune one thousands, we used to work with Meta, automotive companies, banks, telecom. So Enterprise is very dear to my heart. If it wasn’t for Enterprise, I wouldn’t have discovered WordPress. Well, and I wouldn’t have stuck long enough in WordPress if it wasn’t for Enterprise either. So that’s definitely something I love talking about.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Awesome. And I’m especially excited because not only do we know each other, we all run our own agencies. We’ve been doing this for, well longer than 10 years, over a decade. But I also think it’s interesting because of just our locations within the world and especially kind of bringing not only experiences within WordPress online but also where we live. So I’m in Philadelphia. I’m on the east coast in the United States. Tom, where are you at?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I am in France. So currently enjoying the Olympics originally from the UK.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Are you at the Olympics?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Well, I want to say I’m at the Olympics right now.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Are you living in France now? I didn’t even realize you moved.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I do live in France. Yeah, I’ve lived here for a couple of years now.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />You are a big Olympics fan if you moved there two years ahead just to get ready for it. That’s cool. Mario, you’re a little bit further over there, right? Where are you at?</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Not too far off from Tom right now I’m in Bulgaria, which is just one time zone ahead, but we used to be a little further apart when you used to live in the UK, right, Tom?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Exactly. Yeah,</p>



<p>Brad:<br />A little closer. But yeah, I think it’s just having not only a perspective, like I said, of what we do online because it’s amazing that we can connect this. I’m still blown away by technology and that we can just kind of get together and chat about things. So it’s got to be a lot of fun. I think we’re going to have different perspectives as well with our clients and just our experiences. So let’s jump in. I know we’ve got a lot of big topics you want to kind of dive into and talk about. The first one that I really, I like to ask people this and people ask me this a lot too, but I think it’s a fun question. It’s really just defining enterprise specifically within the WordPress world, right? It’s such a big, it’s just a heavy word, right? Enterprise. What does that mean? I’d love to hear, I think each one of us maybe take a turn and just kind of in our own words, when someone says enterprise or enterprise WordPress, what does that mean to you? How do you describe WordPress within the enterprise? And Tom, you want to kick us off?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Sure. I mean, probably in its simplest form inside the WordPress space, usually it just means big stuff, right? Big projects or big companies or something. Probably that’s how we all first came across it. WordPress is starting to be used for more serious stuff. I think also you can think in the broader software world, enterprise often just means customized, not going to take it off the shelf. You go on the pricing page, it says a hundred bucks a month, 200 bucks a month contact us. Enterprise is the contact us option.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />It’s the no price listed option, right?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />No price listed option. There’s no off the shelf plan for you. You need to customize it. And so you need to work with, often you need to work with one of our service providers to do that. I think in the enterprise CMS space, you can often think of the difference as being enterprises need a platform. They don’t really think of it as we want a website and what’s the CMS? We need a website. They think we need a platform to power all our websites to power all the stuff we’re doing to integrate with all the stuff we are using to fit with all of our workflows, hence the need for it to be heavily customized. So I guess, yeah, probably that’s how I’d think about it.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah. Mario, let’s see your take and I’ll give you mine and we’ll see if we’re all thinking the same way, if we’re laying a little different.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Yeah, I love the definition of enterprise being the cost plan. It’s always custom. You always talk to an enterprise sales rep. You always have a custom quote, an RFP, and presentations, index, and stuff. And the reason you do that is you’re talking to 12 different stakeholders. You have to escalate to the board and get approved from the CFO and it’s just slow to this process. If we have to get super literal, once again enterprises, it comes from Latin and then it goes to French. And I don’t speak French, so Tom can correct me, but it comes from, what is it, entrepreneur or so, which is like to undertake or however it’s translated. Tom, do you know the actual definition? You’ve been living there for two years.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I don’t know the old French definition of enterprise unfortunately, but I’ll do my research for the next show.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />There we go. But yeah, I mean essentially it is just to undertake and we are all entrepreneurs, right? Because we start new businesses, we undertake actions. So semantically speaking, even one person company is an enterprise. Realistically speaking, we have micro-enterprises up to 10 people or a certain revenue cap. Then we have small enterprises up to 50 people, small-medium enterprises up to 250, and then they just keep scaling up in the grand scheme of things. Looking at the top of the chart, I always take a look at like s and p 500 or NASDAQ companies. Most of the FAANG companies, they do have hundreds of thousands of employees. Amazon I believe is probably the largest out of the tech at least. They used to pick at about 1.5 million staff members and now they’re at 1.3, 1.4. But we are talking about tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of team members, which of course, if you can imagine org chart, it gets to lots of different C levels and VPs and senior VPs and then directors and supervisors and all these kind of trailing down. So the difference between a small startup project and an enterprise, I usually speak to more people. You have to take more decisions, you have to deal with data privacy, security, scalability, and lots of other different considerations that you may not necessarily be dealing with in a small team environment. How about you, Brad?</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, I kind of go back to how Tom simplifies it, like big WordPress, that’s how I’ve always described it. Big WordPress, big challenges, big goals, big needs. When I say big, it may not be that what they might need is necessarily a big lift to build, but when you build something in the enterprise for a big conglomerate or big company, things take a lot more work to do, even simple tasks. So I think big, it’s not always this massively complex customized system. It just means building things in that are going to scale in the enterprise. They’re going to handle the traffic, they’re going to meet all those really strict security requirements, accessibility requirements, all these things that every company out there is important to them. But they need agencies like ours to help them through that, navigate through that, especially when it comes to WordPress. But yeah, I love to hear, I think most people think when you hear enterprise, it’s like Microsoft or it’s just these biggest of the biggest, the whatever, the s and p 100. But it could</p>



<p>be quite a bit bigger than that. I honestly think, Tom, you guys do a lot of work with universities and stuff. I think a lot of the universities, I consider enterprise because they have big needs and big challenges. They certainly have enterprise needs.</p>



<p>A lot of content that they’re trying to figure out how to make it in a way that people can find what they need, which is probably one of the biggest challenges for universities and even local government is the sheer size of content they have to have out there and then make it easy to find what you’re looking for. But yeah, that’s how I kind of define it. I think it’s a big term because it should be, but it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, which we’ll talk about a little bit. The state of enterprise survey that went out, we’ll get into that, but the way it’s defined within the survey, which I thought was pretty good too, is a high profile brand, a publisher with a national and or global audience or a corporate conglomerate. So I think that kind of helps summarize it too, but it’s really big WordPress big needs.</p>



<p>So why is enterprise and WordPress so important? Why are we talking about it? Especially when I say we, I mean not just the three of us on the show, but agencies that really help build WordPress at scale within the enterprise. Obviously this is important to us, but why is it important for the larger community within WordPress? Why is enterprise, why are we focused so much on it? Why are we spending so much time? I almost try to help grow WordPress within the enterprise, help corporations realize that it’s a great product that can compete with anything that they’re using, but why is it because the majority of people that use WordPress could care less about the enterprise, right? This is a very small percentage of WordPress builders and users that would be considered in this space. So the big question is why is it important for WordPress that we’re actually talking about the enterprise and trying to get more people to adopt WordPress within the enterprise? I’ll just open it up, whoever wants to jump in.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Well, so from where I stand, one of the reasons is the versatility of WordPress as a platform. So when we take a look at different software applications or tools or so, we do have a pretty broad spectrum of a single creator or a solopreneur type of systems and very high scale enterprise solutions out there. And WordPress is one of the very few platforms that is able to serve both at the same time. There are certain, and I’m probably not going to name specific names or so, but just the Indie hacker solopreneur tools that are one personality. They don’t have a team plan. You cannot add more members. There’s no security data, privacy support and stuff. It’s just one single person can use that. All the freelancers or single individual people. And then there’s the Adobes, the sales forces and all the other corporations building pretty hardcore tools, think of SAP, you cannot deploy an SAP as an ERP for any organization that has fewer than I would say, 500 people probably if you’re 200, maybe you can use it and not spend the 20 people’s time, full-time operating DRP.</p>



<p>But for the most part, you need to be a massive conglomerate to be able to use that. And unlike all of these, WordPress is probably the one, and if not one and only one of the very few ones, Drupal may probably fall in the same camp, but the one that’s super suitable for starting out being a freelancer or photographer or a journalist or blogger or so, but then at the same time serving universities and NASA and the White House and all the other different segments covering the enterprise. So the reason it’s so important is historically speaking in 2003, when WordPress started, it started as a blogging platform. It wasn’t supposed to be the go-to enterprise tool, while other players in the market were, that’s how they started. This was the pivot, this was the goal. And now we are managing, what is it, 43.5% or so of the web, but our enterprise coverage is still limited because we’re not talking enough about all the capabilities and opportunities of WordPress, which is why lots of enterprise are just not considering WordPress as one of the suitable tools to use, which is a shame. And that’s essentially why we have to talk more about that.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I mean, that probably speaks to the opportunity and challenge for WordPress and why it’s so important. In some ways, as you said, Brad, the majority of users aren’t enterprise users. It’s a fairly small user base, but actually as an economic segment of the WordPress economy or something, enterprise is actually huge. I dunno what the stats would be, but I imagine it’s up there, maybe hosting and e-commerce or something is larger, but probably after that, the enterprise part of the ecosystem is probably the third largest or something. And so the amount of money and resources that bring into the ecosystem is pretty large. And we see that the number of enterprise agencies that contribute means core or something. Again, it’s fairly sizable. So I think that’s just one factor. I think part of its importance is just the outside influence it has and the outside role it has to play.</p>



<p>I think in WordPress, I think also just the fact that these well-known brands, sure, maybe you’re just moving one website to WordPress when you’re doing NASA, but it’s such a well-known brand, it has this huge impact actually out in the market in terms of WordPress being taken seriously. I mean, one of the things I love about WordPress is that NASA are using WordPress core. You as a freelance photographer can go and download WordPress core and you get the same thing. That’s actually really not true. SAP is a good example. You wouldn’t want to use SAP if you were a freelance photographer, but you couldn’t even if you wanted to. There’s not that many products actually where that’s true, where you really get the same product. And so I think that’s another reason why it’s important. All of the innovation that happens at the enterprise tier can flow down and be available to everybody, which is really cool.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, I mean that’s a great point. The innovation, and especially from open source, the more we contribute, we as a community within the WordPress project, the more anyone contributes, the better the project’s going to be, the better the software. And so the enterprise is bringing where we see those contributions, which many of these large organizations are starting to get into more, which is awesome. But we’re starting to see where they’re more focused on these areas that smaller sites would never even maybe run into those problems. Like the scalability side of it, right? The site’s going to have a million posts in one month, is that going to scale? So being able to contribute, you can go in there and actually help WordPress if there are bottlenecks, of course we know it can scale and can handle that, right? Especially if you have the right host and server setup.</p>



<p>But understanding if there are bottlenecks, I can think of a specific one. This was back, I don’t know, eight, 10 years ago. But as multi-site was starting to get more popular, networks were getting bigger, and WordPress was having a real challenge handling large networks. So if you imagine you have a thousand sites in your network and you got a network dropdown list, it would just bomb because it was trying to load all these sites. And same with users. If you had a million users, WordPress would just break because you couldn’t load a million. It would just break trying to pull that data back. These sites that were basically pushing WordPress to its limits, expose those limits. And now we have as a community worked on that and made it so it does scale. You can have an unlimited amount of users, unlimited amount of sites in the network, and it’s not just going to blow up, it’s going to work. And that all came from these larger builds, kind of pushing the limits and then discovering, Hey, we got to fix this. This isn’t going to scale if we don’t do something about it. And now it’s like I said, we’ve all seen it at scale on these massive networks or massive sites. So I love that idea of just those larger problems trickling down and hopefully being fixed within the enterprise teams and contributing back. That’s the number one thing. If they’re not contributing back then open source isn’t going to work anyways, right?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I mean, I think we’ve seen that play out right where it used to be. I mean, I think probably one of the reasons why Enterprise WordPress is kind of synonymous with just big WordPress is actually it was quite hard to do big WordPress back in the day. And so a lot of the stuff we were solving then as enterprise-like service providers was just scale and performance. But actually a lot of that has been solved. Now it’s not particularly hard to run WordPress at scale. And that’s thanks to that work trickling down being fed back directly and now we can focus on other stuff, which is cool.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />And going back to another point, I think, Tom, you might’ve made around kind of validating WordPress, you mentioned NASA, Whitehouse.gov, probably the number one, probably the most targeted government website in the world, probably one of ‘em at least, if not number one, is running WordPress. So being able to say that with full confidence as an agency owner trying to validate WordPress to an enterprise, there’s a lot of value behind</p>



<p>that, right? No, we didn’t build that site, but somebody did it. It’s amazing. And it’s on WordPress, right? NASA is doing it. Whitehouse.gov is doing it. You can do it. Microsoft’s running it. Their whole security team does an annual audit of WordPress. If Microsoft says it’s okay to run it, it’s probably okay for you. So it helps validate and make these conversations easier, especially as we’re trying to bring WordPress to the table for a lot of these organizations.</p>



<p>Because I think, Mario, you mentioned earlier about Adobe, AEM. I can remember sales pitches where I’m sitting there in a boardroom of Viacom pitching WordPress and why all their sites should be on WordPress and some weren’t, and they’re trying to figure out what they wanted to go all in on. And then right behind us was Adobe with about 30 people, multiple professors of data science coming up there showing all, and I’m like, versus my much smaller team, I’m like, how do we compete? And that was where it was really eyeopening that we need to collectively within this community, those of us that are in the WordPress space, we need to work together. We need to put our voices together, our thoughts together and help lift WordPress into the enterprise base, which is exactly what we’re doing here, right? Exactly what Scale Consortium is doing, what we’re doing here, working with the WordPress core team and contributors, because now we’re working on the WordPress dot org slash enterprise page.</p>



<p>If you didn’t know that exists, go check it out. Not a ton to look at yet, but I promise you we’re working on it. And so it’s nice to see that things are happening because even just a couple of years ago, none of this, there wasn’t an enterprise page. We were all on our own trying to pitch WordPress and realizing that’s not going to get us where we need to go. So that’s why it’s important because WordPress actually grows because of the enterprise, just like it grows from small businesses using it. So it is a good thing for all of us.</p>



<p>I want to mention a little bit about the state of the Enterprise WordPress survey. So this has gone around and it was from 2023, so obviously we’re a little past the halfway mark of 2024, but I think it’s interesting to look at it retrospectively, but also I wanted to also highlight the fact that the 2024 survey is also live. So if you have not seen it, definitely go. It’s SOEWP.com, state of enterprise WordPress. SOEPW.com is where you can take the 2024 survey, but you can also view the results of last year’s survey. This is really spearheaded by a number of agencies. I think Big Bite and Human Made, you guys were pretty involved in this, and I know a lot of us were helping promote it because it’s getting data back, but essentially they interviewed approximately over a hundred corporations enterprise what would be considered enterprise level companies, enterprise brands, I should say Macy’s, NewsCorp. These are big, these are enterprise, right? Big WordPress the Times, and it got some really interesting data back. So if you guys have any data points that stand out, there are a few that stood out to me that I thought we should touch on, but if there’s any other data points you want to talk about, please, let’s do it because it’s interesting. I love this type of data. I haven’t seen this before specifically on WordPress and Enterprise, so just having anything to talk about and look at it I think is really interesting. Yeah,</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I mean that’s the first thing. I think before we get to the actual results, I think that this is such a great example of something that doesn’t happen unless we all get together and do it right, that we actually have a real lack of data underpinning what we’re doing and pooling our resources to put something like this together. It’s not actually a huge amount of work and it can bring a lot of value even though this one is a few months past now, it’s the first one. So actually we can learn a lot from it.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />In the next one. I would expect now that people know it’s there, I’m sure some people missed it. And now on the WordPress dot org slash enterprise page, they have linked it up with a nice banner at the bottom. So I would expect we’ll have quite a bit more data points for the next one. So definitely share it. If you listen to the show, check it out, share it with anyone, especially corporations that might actively want to fill this out. It can really help shape some of the future of WordPress, especially at the enterprise side.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />What stood out to you from the actual results?</p>



<p>Brad:<br />So the one that stood out to me, I think really just like the important factors of choosing WordPress. This is something, as an agency owner, I like to know this. Why did they choose WordPress? What were the items that kind of pushed them over the edge? I think cost is always going to be one of those things that’s always going to be a bit of a factor. But when you’re in the enterprise, WordPress is probably one of the cheaper options when you really think about licensing and costs and Adobe and Sitecore and some others versus WordPress. WordPress is generally going to come out on top, probably almost in every case. It’s going to come out on top from a cost perspective. But the number one thing on this list in terms of what was the most important was functionality followed by scalability, extensibility, and usability.</p>



<p>So it’s really about the flexibility of WordPress, which I guess that makes sense. That’s probably what I would assume too, but the WordPress is so flexible, scalable that they can really extend it to do what they need to do. And that is the core of enterprise because WordPress is not going to just install it and it’s ready for the enterprise. There is a lot you have to do to kind of get it ready. And a lot of that is customizations. And a lot of that’s really specific to the organization you’re working with because again, they have such unique setups and unique systems, and most of them, they may be on a WP engine or WordPressVIP, but many of them are not. A lot of them are still hosting their own stack or maybe they have their own hardware, which I know sounds crazy, but some of these organizations do because how they can control everything about what’s on that and who has control over that data, which is important to them. But on the flip side, something that caught my attention was the fact that multilingual capabilities were not as important, which I thought was kind of surprising. Every larger corporation I worked with, multilingual capabilities were important. Having localized content, especially in any region, there’s a global presence, an office or something of that company, but I’m really surprised it was over 57% said it’s not important. Over half said it’s not important. Yeah.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Well, what’s your take on that, Mario? I wonder if that gels with what you would assume the importance of multilingual would be?</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Well, and that’s something that made an impression on me as well. So my personal way I’m interpreting this at least is first off, we do have a pretty sizable percentage of publishers here in that specific survey. So I would say that when we’re considering national publishers, particularly in, let’s say, the States or the UK or post-Australia, they wouldn’t be focusing that much on multilingual. That’s kind of one thing that stands out. We’ve been working with different, again, enterprises primarily in North America, they don’t care that much about multilingual. And again, as someone who lived in Europe, and my language, I’m not a native English speaker, I can totally understand how important this may be in certain scenarios. Again, you guys have worked with Microsoft or some of the other top orgs that have 12 languages in the dropdown by default. So for some that’s important, but this may not necessarily be the most integral factor here.</p>



<p>The other thing that stands in mind that kind of stuck up here is I believe that they fully realize the power of workplace multi-site and the ability to launch different instances for different regions for sites because it’s pretty common in enterprise. Most if you go to Nike or the Louis Vuitton brand, you land on the landing page with lots of flags and say, Hey, which country? And then it leads you to some form of a localized website. So these are completely different standalone instances. And I think this is also pretty important to recognize enterprise are not afraid of maintaining 20 different websites, even though they may look alike and just run a DevOps tooling to upgrade all this at the same time, unlike what we do ourselves. But a couple of other things that stood out in the survey, first off, and Brad kind of briefly touched on that, but functionality like 70% of the IS functionality was very important.</p>



<p>This was the leading factor. 70% said WordPress is there for functionality. And I think we are not talking about this enough when I think of what are the options for an enterprise, they can go with a hosted kind of CMS through show, which of course it is hosted. It has a limited finite number of integrations, modules, developers through show. They can do bespoke, build a team and build something for three years and spend like $12 million just building a bespoke system and then still don’t have integrations or they can go open source. And when I think of open source, I just can’t think of any better solution that has, again, the flexibility</p>



<p>, versatility, integration, feature set number of plugins or API integrations, we show it to WordPress. So I think this is pretty important. And last but not least, or actually two things, but I’ll try to do it real quick. First off is build cost. So 22% of the service that they build their enterprise MVP, like less than 50 grand. I challenge any enterprise to do the same with any other platform whatsoever.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Is that a one-pager?</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Well, yeah, maybe just a mockup. Maybe just a mockup. If their creative team doesn’t waste four times on charting a log or something.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />It’s just a strategy phase</p>



<p>Mario:<br />And hosting costs. We get lots of enterprises migrating to us because they say, Hey, we find it better to pay, let’s say 10 grand a month retainer for you to changes because we pay more for hosting. So we are paying 15 grand, 20 grand or so for just keeping the lights on, no custom development or changes or human contact whatsoever. And we believe we can bring our hosting down to 2 to 5k a month and spend the other 10k and to essentially incur zero costs whatsoever and actually get professional development behind. So comparing that with what it actually costs, maintaining an enterprise system once it’s already there is something that is a place where WordPress really shines.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, I mean they’re all good points for sure. I did pick up on the cost thing and it’s hard to say less than 50,000, whatever that was, but there are smaller projects within Enterprise. But yeah, like you said, there’s usually a lot more hoops you have to jump through. So even a simple website turns into a much larger lift and build. The one area I think we really as a community need to work on or maybe as an enterprise we need to work on is contributing. So if you look at does your organization contribute to open source, 62% said no, just flat out, nope, we do not contribute. Now I do think you should take that with a grain of salt because that holds true if they’re not working with an agency, if they’re not working with outside partners, if it’s just their development team within their organization, they’re not contributing.</p>



<p>That’s a flat no. However, I bet this is a little bit mixed bag, right? Where the no is, no, we don’t. But we work with DevriX or we work with Human Made, may work with WebDevStudios and they do. It’s like indirectly by them hiring us and letting us build their sites and investing in not only their site but in us as an agency, we’re able to roll that forward into our five for the future efforts and our contribution efforts. I know of our agencies contribute to WordPress. I know that for a fact and we would not do that if we didn’t have an agency or did not have good clients that could allow us the time to do that. So I do think we should take that grain of salt. I’ve worked with a lot of enterprise companies that don’t contribute, but the agencies and companies that work with do.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I think it’s something we could do quite a bit more around actually as a space, like you say, I think a lot of those companies don’t really realize that’s the case. We are probably not doing a good enough job of making that part of the pitch. I think it’s pretty common these days more and more common for this open source contribution stuff to fit quite nicely into goals or other initiatives that are happening in the enterprise. Again, there are dots that are probably not being connected. Even some kind of five for the Future Rep program that could extend to enterprise users of WordPress I think would be pretty interesting to think about.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, the great way to look at it too is if your team, your developers are contributing. It’s not just putting things on the void and your corporation organization gets nothing out of it, right? Yes, they’re contributing to WordPress, which of course you’re going to directly benefit from, but you’re also leveling up your developers. They’re a hundred percent getting better at WordPress and understanding how WordPress works and getting into the core software and understanding how to read the code and how to work with Track and how to interact with the community. So your developers are going to level up, which means you’re going to get more out of them. The value is going to increase out of the salary versus benefits that you’re getting from them and work that you’re getting. So there are just a lot of advantages to it. But I think organizations, it’s a bit of a mindset shift.</p>



<p>They need to be working on our stuff. Why are they working over there? Well, they are working on your stuff by working over there and you can also prioritize initiatives within contributing that are important to your organization. It’s still contributing. It’s still helping. Even if you’re saying, I really want you to contribute to this thing, we kind of need it. It still helps everybody. So I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If you want to contribute one thing, if you’re looking for an easy ticket, get featured images automatically added into RSS feeds, that’s still out there. But if that’s important to your organization, your team could do that and it could probably get in the next release of WordPress. So that’s probably, like you say, there’s an educational component to it too of they just look at it as time they’re not spending on the business, but they actually kind of are. So that’s something we’re working on we&#8217;ll continue to work on because we love contributing to WordPress all of us. So it’s just working with these organizations and helping them understand how they can do it and how that benefits them.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Something that jumped out to me in the survey that I’ll just mention at the end was the demographic of the respondents. I think something like 40, maybe slightly higher percent were leadership positions, which again, we’ve not been doing this survey before, but I would think that reflects a change compared to five, six years ago when actually WordPress was usually coming in bottom up. It wasn’t leadership led as I think that’s the stat I’ll be keeping an eye on over the surveys as we run them year on year. I think that for me tracks one of the major threads of enterprise WordPress as evolution. How do we go from bottom-up champion to leadership led?</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, that’s actually a great point. You’re not wrong. It used to stubble up from it, the tech people that worked with it and kind of liked it and they were like, Hey, we should look at this. Or maybe even marketing had an angle on it too because they were familiar with it from a marketing angle. But yeah, seeing it from the top down, that is a bit of a shift and that’s a good shift. And then of course just around this one is very encouraging too, and we’ll wrap up the survey here, but around the block editor, right, we’re always talking about what is the adoption, who’s using the block editor? Are they on the old classic WYSIWYG editor? And by and large, it seems like they are adopting it. There’s only about 19% that said they’re still on classic. And I think I was thinking about this.<br />I’m like, I’m sure this is largely impacted by the fact that corporations and enterprise have budgets. They have money they can invest to say we need to upgrade. This is the new thing, we got to get on it. Whereas smaller and medium businesses, if they just rebuilt their site a couple of years ago, they’re not going to reinvest to do it just to get blocks right now, if you’re a media site, you should because the value you’re bringing to your editors is going to be worth it. But a lot of sites, it’s just not there. So I would imagine that’s part of it. But just to see the adoption with the block editor being so high, and to be fair, about 27% is both so kind of a mixed bag, but at least they are using some blocks and then 54%, so over half is they’re all in on the block editor in Gutenberg. So that’s nice to see.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, it’d be interesting to compare that to the broader, I dunno how that compares to broader usage of block editor, but I did that. I think that also connects back to the previous point where actually a lot of us who are doing enterprise work, were involved in the block editor because we are part of the project. And so we were able to bring that experience very early to our clients. A lot of us were launching Production Enterprise on the plugin before it was even merged into core. Whereas a lot of the broader web ecosystem, that transition has been more difficult. The ramp ups were more difficult learning a whole new thing, whereas I think of enterprise agencies didn’t face that so much. We were involved already.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s such a game changer for organizations, especially media organizations. Once they see it, there’s that light bulb moment. Oh yeah, we definitely want that.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, demo’s amazing.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Cool. Well, we’re kind of coming up on time, so I want to briefly just touch on upcoming events. I know we have WordCamp US coming up, so if you’re anywhere you want to come, it’s in Portland, Oregon and it’s coming up on September 17th, 20th. I will be there. Are either one of you going to be able to make WordCamp US this year?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I will also be there. Yeah, looking forward to that.</p>



<p>Brad</p>



<p>:<br />Yeah, Tom will be there. Mario, you got to make it over.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />It’s close to school year, so unfortunately I’ll be here.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Yeah, I know. Yeah, timing gets tough. The timing of WordCamp US is always a little bit tough with school. I think last year was the week right before school started for me. I know it’s different everywhere, but you got to kind of juggle that with the family, right? So it’ll be a really fun event. So Tom and I will be there, a number of members of the Scale Consortium with the group of agencies that are working with the enterprise. So if you’re there, track us down. Love to talk, WordPress Talk, enterprise, all that good stuff. I want to give you both a chance to promote where people can find you online if they want to reach out and talk to you, blog, your website, company, Twitter, X, whatever. So Tom, where can people track you down?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Probably Twitter is the best, just my name @Tom Willmot. You should check out scaleconsortium.org if you’re interested in what we’re doing over there. And this general initiative to come together as an enterprise WordPress space and grow the pie for us all and humanmade.com.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Awesome. Hey Mario, where can everyone find you?</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Yeah, LinkedIn and Twitter are going to be the two best places. Look up Mario Peshev and more than happy to chat. If you need any WordPress or B2B growth solutions, DevriX.com is the place to go. And if you have any questions about enterprise, I’m pretty sure that all of us are going to be more than happy to help out. We are not just spending a hundred percent of our time on just sales pitches and closing business. We definitely want to make WordPress for the enterprise a better place and educating a lot for free writing books, giving sessions and podcasts and lots of different events. So it’s a completely different culture than what you’re probably used to IT webinars and sales pitches and BDR calls as well.</p>



<p>Brad:<br />WordPress is a fun side of enterprise.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Yes,</p>



<p>Brad:<br />Definitely less stuffy over here. Come on in. The water’s fine, right?</p>



<p>I also love the fact you both called it Twitter. I’m still in the Twitter camp, so I’m on Twitter still somehow. Williamsba and over at webdevstudios.com if you want to check out our professional side of things. But this has really been a lot of fun. I’m really excited about the show. I want to bring on a lot of different guests and get different experiences. I want to bring on not just agencies, I want to bring on site administrators, site owners, I want to bring on marketing. I want to bring on people that are using WordPress in the enterprise and really hear about their experiences. Good, bad, otherwise, right? But get a lot of people from Scale Consortium on here as well because they’re all working within the enterprise. So it’s going to be a lot of fun. So if you’re interested in coming on the show, please reach out to myself or Bob WP, you can hit us up. And we’re in most of the WordPress Slacks post status, so love to have you on and looking forward to some future episodes on WordPress and the enterprise, the inside view. So I appreciate it, Tom. Mario, thanks for joining and we’ll see everyone next time.</p>



<p>Mario:<br />Great chat everyone. See you</p>



<p>Tom:<br />See you next time.</p>
</div>




<p>In this first episode of <strong><em>The Inside Track</em></strong> via our show, <strong><em>Scaling Enterprise, WordPress and OSS</em></strong>, hosts <strong>Brad Williams</strong> and <strong>Tom Willmot</strong>, along with special guest <strong>Mario Peshev from DevriX</strong>, introduce you to the world of enterprise WordPress. Together, they share the unique challenges and opportunities of using WordPress at scale within large organizations. </p>



<p>They discuss the definition of enterprise in the context of WordPress, share insights from their extensive experience running their own agencies, and highlight key findings from the State of Enterprise WordPress survey. Additionally, they touch on the importance of contributing to open source, and the impact of multilingual capabilities. </p>



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



<p><strong>Definition of Enterprise WordPress</strong>: Enterprise WordPress refers to large-scale WordPress implementations that cater to big projects or companies, often requiring customized solutions to meet complex needs.</p>



<p><strong>Importance of Functionality</strong>: The primary reason enterprises choose WordPress is its flexibility and functionality, which allows it to be extended and customized to meet specific organizational requirements.</p>



<p><strong>Cost-Effectiveness</strong>: WordPress is often a more cost-effective option compared to other enterprise solutions, making it an attractive choice for companies looking to manage their budgets while achieving robust functionality.</p>



<p><strong>Multilingual Capabilities</strong>: Surprisingly, multilingual capabilities were not deemed as critical by many enterprises, despite the expectation that larger organizations would prioritize localized content.</p>



<p><strong>Contribution to Open Source</strong>: A significant number of enterprises do not directly contribute to open source. However, many indirectly support contributions through the agencies they work with, which invest time and resources back into the WordPress community.</p>



<p><strong>Leadership Involvement</strong>: There is a shift towards leadership-led adoption of WordPress in enterprises, indicating that decision-makers are recognizing the value and capabilities of WordPress for large-scale projects.</p>



<p><strong>Adoption of the Block Editor</strong>: A majority of enterprises have adopted the Gutenberg block editor, showing a trend towards utilizing the latest WordPress features to enhance content management and editing capabilities.</p>



<p><strong>Community and Collaboration</strong>: The episode emphasizes the importance of collaboration within the WordPress community to continue advancing the platform, particularly in the enterprise space, and highlights initiatives like Scale Consortium.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://scaleconsortium.org/">Scale Consortium</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://soewp.com/">Take the survey &#8220;State of Enterprise WordPress, 2024 Report&#8221; </a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://soewp.com/2023-report/">See the report for the 2023 State of Enterprise WordPress</a></strong></li>
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Zach:<br />Hello and welcome to another episode of the Woo DevChat. I am here with Carl Alexander, as usual, and Carl, I see Carl board peeking over your shoulder there. How are the two of you doing?</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Always, always creeping out.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Right? Right.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I mean, he&#8217;s doing what he needs to do. Creep out people on Zoom calls and also scare children at birthday parties. That&#8217;s his retirement life.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I am coming up on an interesting milestone. I believe the first time that we met was at a WordCamp Minneapolis and it&#8217;s just around the corner again.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />That&#8217;s good that you remember because most of my interactions with people are like, I don&#8217;t remember the first time I met you. I just know, I don&#8217;t remember not knowing you. We crossed paths so many times and I was like, but I don&#8217;t know when it was. I just don&#8217;t know when it was the first time. I think my most vivid memory of, okay, I really know this person was like, and we met a few times already, was at Pressnomics.</p>



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



<p>Carl:<br />You were sitting in the lobby talking to someone, I don&#8217;t know who, but you were sitting in the hotel lobby having a chat with someone and I just remember, I dunno, that&#8217;s my most vivid memory of, okay, this is Zach.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I think my most vivid memory was in one of the after parties. We were in a large venue and it was you, me, Michelle Schulp, and a few other people.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah. I think most people&#8217;s most vivid, vivid memories of me are after parties. I was going to say the same. If you ask Robert Jacobi, that&#8217;s all he talks about.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Right, and I have to correct myself. It&#8217;s Michelle Schulp Hunt now. Congratulations, Michelle.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Oh yeah, Michelle Schulp Hunt. Yes.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Yeah. So WordCamp Minneapolis is right around the corner. It&#8217;s coming up on August 16th. I will be there. It&#8217;s at the Mall of America this year. So if you&#8217;re listening to this episode and you are anywhere near Minneapolis St. Paul, please come join us. Go to Minneapolis dot WordCamp dot org slash 2024 and I would love to see some of you there. Maybe we can have an onsite dev chat with some of the people. So yeah, I&#8217;m looking forward to going.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Exciting.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;ll be a good time. And then right around the corner after that is WordCamp US in Portland.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, so I&#8217;ll be there.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I will definitely be there as well. And it&#8217;s going to be, I think, a really good camp from everything that I&#8217;m seeing. The venue looks cool now. Everything looks like it&#8217;s going to be a good time.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Is it going to be Portland weird?</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I think so. And I think that you may have just introduced yourself. So for anybody who is wondering what the third voice there is, that is Ash Shaw. Ash, why don&#8217;t you give us a little bit of an introduction of yourself?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Hi, I am Ash. Yeah, I&#8217;m 43 now. I started my career in tech back in &#8217;99 when Microsoft was trying to find cheap labor. So they came up with MCSE. I quickly learned that that wasn&#8217;t really that much fun and we&#8217;ve got a great Linux community in Cape Town called Plug Cape Linux User Group. I discovered them through a friend and a few people in the group showed me some tricks. I fell in love with open source, more specifically open source in the broader term. I got a CIS admin job at a university. Moved on from that to starting Lightspeed Development, which I shortened to Lightspeed back in 2003. We moved to working with WordPress in about 2007. The inspiration came from something called BarCamp. BarCamp Cape Town. They were kind of informal community organized events, not about specific tech, but about tech in general. I met a very interesting person back then, Jeremy Thurgood, who was working on Amazon&#8217;s cloud infrastructure way back then. I just remember he had this bizarre device attached to his laptop that was a security device, so anything in and out of his laptop was encrypted. Back then it was a brick of a laptop with this giant device attached. Very bizarre.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />That&#8217;s crazy. I&#8217;d never heard of that, but that sounds like really…</p>



<p>Ash:<br />I&#8217;d never seen that again.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s like crazy. And I did some work with law firms, so they were pretty security conscious, but the best we had was the original RSA 2FAs.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah, to be honest, I don&#8217;t remember what it was exactly. I just remember he said it was to encrypt the data and anything going in and out of his laptop. Yeah. Then I met another chap who introduced me to WordPress and blogging and I realized that there was a whole community behind it and communities have always intrigued me and I&#8217;m a social person, so I started getting involved in trying to find more events and then I think it was one of the first 10 WordCamps that happened in Cape Town. Matt Mullenweg attended. It was back in 2008. It was what sparked a serious round of inspiration and drive to actually learn more. My lead developer is still with my company. He joined us back in, I think it was December 2006. So that was a long time ago. And we&#8217;ve had an interesting journey through the different versions of WordPress and we built for a political party, the Democratic Alliance. We built a multi-site blogging network on an initial alpha of BuddyPress. We&#8217;ve never done that again.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I wonder why. I wonder.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />It was the first forever. My lead developer said never again if I&#8217;m going to continue working.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />It&#8217;s so funny. One of my first projects at an agency with WordPress was around BuddyPress and I was like, what was the forum? The one that turned into the BBPress?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />The forum BBPress.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />It was BBPress. Okay, yeah. I was like, no, never again.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />No, they didn&#8217;t integrate properly.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />But it made it so complex.</p>



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



<p>Carl:<br />It&#8217;s gotten better now, but it is still complex.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />I think Andy Peatling, who originally worked on it, I&#8217;m not sure if he&#8217;s still involved, but I know JJJ, he&#8217;s…</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Not, he&#8217;s not. He&#8217;s at Automattic. But I met Andy Peatling when we were using BuddyPress because I used BuddyPress as my initial way of structuring complex code and large code bases in WordPress. That was the only large code base I was aware of. So he came to WordCamp Montreal and I remember talking with him and just saying thank you. I would have no idea how to structure this code. Just like we were doing really large projects. And I&#8217;m like, how do people do this? It&#8217;s like, this is insane. And then the only example we had was BuddyPress.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah. So the BuddyPress was quite interesting. I worked with it for quite a while. And then my passion for the community and all of that drove me to organize a couple of WordCamps in Cape Town. Then I handed over to the community in 2014. I remember it was the last WordCamp San Francisco, and I managed to get in to join the WordPress Summit where we mapped out the next year of the roadmap. It was really fascinating. And somebody at WooThemes, I was complaining to them about Canvas theme and how they kept making changes and they kept breaking all of our site&#8217;s CSS classes changing and this and that, and it was a nightmare. And he said, well, if you have a problem with it, build your own. And I thought to myself, good idea. And we based it on underscores initially and that classic theme. We were stuck with Bootstrap three until, well, it&#8217;s still got Bootstrap three.</p>



<p>We didn&#8217;t know how to change that. And then last year we built, or the previous theme is LSX, the classic theme. And then last year we built LSX design, which was a block-based theme, and that meant we almost had to relearn everything. I took a bit of a sabbatical in 2020 to 2021, a one-year sabbatical. And when I came back in 2022, I started researching things again and I was like, what is happening? Everything&#8217;s changed. And at the WordCamp Porto I was inspired to go down that rabbit hole. And you guys mentioned ADHD. Well, I&#8217;m in the same boat and I went deep and yeah, it&#8217;s been a great journey, I must say, figuring out where to take this product, learning all new skills. My team has been on board and we&#8217;ve had a blast.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I think that&#8217;s why a lot of people with ADHD like to be solopreneurs or start their own thing and stuff, because a lot of ADHD people that I know also just love learning. They love learning new stuff. You get a nice dopamine hit whenever you skill up at things. So what&#8217;s the easiest way to skill up at is to just do a whole bunch of things, which business requires you to do.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />It&#8217;s been a journey I&#8217;ve gone through multiple times, right? I&#8217;ve talked about this on the show before, but I was a flash developer and I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;re aware, but that kind of disappeared overnight. So we definitely ended up having to retool a whole bunch of us into new technologies. And that&#8217;s how I ended up finding WordPress was as part of that retooling. I actually learned UX and went through a whole bunch of UX courses during that time too. And my first job after Flash was in</p>



<p>a role as a UX architect, so I stepped away from development for a little while and broadened my horizons a bit and learned some design, learned some other things around what makes good user experience, and then came back to development and WordPress basically full bore after that. And the gateway to me really getting involved with WordPress was WooCommerce, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m here. So yeah, I mean that whole learning new things, it&#8217;s something that we are remarkably good at when it&#8217;s something we find interest in. The problem is if we don&#8217;t find interest in it, it&#8217;s very hard for us to then focus and work on it. At least I find that for myself, if I&#8217;m not interested.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I&#8217;ve had the luck that I am pretty good at delayed gratification. So that really helps I think for that because yeah, it&#8217;s really easy. I know a lot of people that are like, oh, and they&#8217;re shifting to new things right away, and it&#8217;s hard to stay focused and do the consistent work that is required to get good at anything. Really.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />The WooCommerce software got launched at WordCamp Cape Town 2012, and that was one of the events I organized. And at that point I was working with WPEcommerce by Dan Millwood and Jeff Ward.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, I remember them.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />I think Dan Mill moved into gaming. I&#8217;m not sure what happened to Jeff. He was a really great developer.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, I remember Dan. We were in a couple of private Facebook groups together. I hadn&#8217;t heard his name in so long, but yeah, I remember when because they tried to get it back up and going for a little bit and then you moved on to something else.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah, gaming.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />So my first real introduction to WooCommerce was building a digital marketplace for a record label that I was a part of. And so all digital, all downloads, and that was a benefit of WooCommerce that most other e-commerce platforms didn&#8217;t have at the time was the ability to create a digital marketplace really easily. We did that for every artist that was on our record label. We had a website where you could buy all of the music we had, and that was 2012 that we started the project for that. And that was built on the white light theme from Woo and just very, very early days of WooCommerce.</p>



<p>And last month we had Beka Rice on and we were talking about the wild west of WooCommerce development. And back then there was a board where you could go and choose plugins you wanted to develop. And that&#8217;s how all of the plugin development that became the marketplace started was with a board of ideas that people claimed things on. And so it&#8217;s really kind of interesting to see where we are today, and probably more importantly for this conversation to see that WooCommerce itself is inspiring some of the things that other people are doing, yourself included. So why don&#8217;t we talk just a little bit about where, first of all, you&#8217;ve done a large update to your plugin and that&#8217;s the LSX tour operator plugin, and you&#8217;ve been using some really, really new cutting edge features and WordPress. But first let&#8217;s talk about the inspiration that you drew from WooCommerce as you started this process of rebuilding your plugin.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />I&#8217;d say it all started with the block theme that we developed last year. We were working with Frank Klein from WP Development Courses. He was mentoring our team on block development practices, best practices, things like that. What an amazing man. He has a wealth of knowledge, I swear. He lives on the GitHub issues for WordPress and Gutenberg. You mention something and he is like, oh, well, and he goes and digs up a ticket that he was the one who either started or facilitated a bunch of information towards. So then because my company is a Woo expert company, we wanted our theme to be deeply integrated with Woo blocks. That was a bit of a nightmare last year and still somewhat of a challenge this year, but in the past six months, I must say it&#8217;s gotten better, exponentially better. So we decided to add support for a lot of the block themes. I mean, the blocks that were beta blocks because I didn&#8217;t really like the original blocks, to be honest.</p>



<p>The product blocks that they had, they had a number of separate blocks that they then replaced with the product collection block. And the way they did that, it was really impressive for me. It&#8217;s basically like a container. And then recently you would, when you want to add a product collection, it gives you a number of templates, like five specific templates and then one general kind of default one. And that really stuck in my head. Then another one of the blocks, which is still beta product collection, came out of beta recently is the gallery beta. And that one&#8217;s so much better than the old gallery block. And I have another e-commerce site back in South Africa. It&#8217;s a side project of mine, and I build that using my company&#8217;s open source theme, and it&#8217;s like a test ground for all of what we are doing. So when something comes out, I will test everything possible. I&#8217;ll try this config and that config and that config and figure out what doesn&#8217;t work. So then I write up GitHub issues for my teammates, and then they will add support. Either it&#8217;s new support for a new WordPress release, and I must say that 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 and 6.6 releases, they just bounce the functionality and capabilities radically. And then when I was at WordCamp Europe recently, I was demoing what we are doing with the Woo blocks to both the CEO of WooCommerce, and he and Pi were really excited about this. They loved what we were doing. We&#8217;ve got full compatibility for all their blogs.</p>



<p>And then we started on this venture of redeveloping our classic PHP-based tour operator plugin, which I was quite honestly scared of doing when we started building that plugin. It&#8217;s also an open source plugin, and it was built to work with our classic theme. And the reason it never really got adopted was because it only worked with that one theme. It was too much to actually get it to work with many themes. We would&#8217;ve needed to write so much code to add compatibility. Now with block themes and blocks, this opens a whole lot of potential. We haven&#8217;t done the testing with other themes yet, but I imagine that things are going to work pretty or better than ever they ever did in the past. So we&#8217;ve been looking at how I was just to unpack a little bit more about the tour operator plugin is it&#8217;s got three core post types with four or five taxonomies.</p>



<p>So you can imagine those are quite a number of templates. So these templates are needed to map out the block-based templates. They can&#8217;t all just run off essential all archives templates. They each need their own one because they have a host of custom fields. So what I&#8217;m working with my developer on is how we can approach this in a similar way to the product collection block where we&#8217;ll come up with hopefully one query loop type of block for all the post types, but realistically we&#8217;ll probably need to do a few for each of the main post types that we&#8217;re still experimenting with. So then another thing that I&#8217;ve got earmarked is the pattern assembler within WooCommerce for customizing the design.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve been testing, it&#8217;s not in the main release yet from what I understand. I think it&#8217;s in a future release. It&#8217;s only in the beta versions, but I imagine if I had eight pairs of fonts for a tour operator site and the ability to then define site logo and site icon and all of that sort of thing through a similar interface that would radically reduce the time that we need to build sites. What we have done with quite a lot of success so far is migrated the many custom fields. So just to give you an idea, a single tour, we will have a couple of the main fields. It&#8217;s got its normal WordPress fields, title, excerpts, body, but then we&#8217;ve also got a, there&#8217;s a featured image, which is standard, but then we also have a hero image that could be a wide image that isn&#8217;t very tall or high. And then a host of values like price and day-by-day itineraries are repeatable groups of fields. So day one or day one to day three, we&#8217;ll then have a number of fields. We solved those in the past using CMB2, which is a good framework. It worked well for us. Have you guys got experience?</p>



<p>Carl:<br />That&#8217;s old? I&#8217;ve used it before. It&#8217;s been around.</p>



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



<p>Carl:<br />I feel like I saw it almost 10 years ago.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />So we can bypass a lot of that. We need it for some of the things that we want to achieve, but with the block bindings API we&#8217;re able to hook into the original slugs that we&#8217;d created for the custom fields. And one of the things that we&#8217;ve developed for our tour operator plugin is an integration with a data partner. So they&#8217;re called whereto.com and they have two types of customers, accommodation providers and tour operators. The accommodation providers pump in their accommodation information like descriptions, rooms, all of that sort of thing. And then tour operators, when they create digital itineraries, they would say, I start in this city and I go to that city and I go to this region, and then they create a really rich media itinerary. But now to display that on a website, you could just embed it with an iframe, but that&#8217;s not great. So we built an integration to their rest API that literally connects to every single data point they have for destinations.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />You cache that?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Well, we actually import it and we&#8217;ve set up triggers that it&#8217;ll poll a specified cron job to check at certain times. Is there a change? Pull it in. We&#8217;ve got rules that we can set up where if the WordPress side has been changed, then it won&#8217;t change. It won&#8217;t import and overwrite. Or maybe you do want it to, there</p>



<p>are a host of ways we can configure nonetheless, the where to importer.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />You happy with that?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s working really well.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I&#8217;m a big fan of consuming API now. I think that&#8217;s way better than a lot of stuff that we had to do early on, like you said, iframes or I feel like that&#8217;s a nice change of the development landscape in the last 10 years as people are just like, now let me just do an API for this. And then they just let you pull the data and then you get it yourself.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />So much better. It does become somewhat unwieldy because imagine that you have 500 accommodation listings attached to 50 tours or a hundred tours and all of the images attached to that, and then the people who load the accommodation data, they don&#8217;t necessarily know that images need to be resized and whatnot. So we over the years had to develop methods to resize images on import scale things. And with the day-by-day itineraries, there aren&#8217;t actually images attached to an individual day. So we managed to create a way for it to automatically assign a random image to the day, for example. And that would be an image from the accommodation listing that&#8217;s attached to that day.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />One of the things that we&#8217;ve done to interlink the different post types is to use a version of Posts 2 Posts by Scribu.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I remember that. Yep. Oh my God. Yeah, he&#8217;s the OG WPCLI developer too, right?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />He discontinued development on that plugin, but that&#8217;s not an issue because we&#8217;ve modified it and brought it into our system.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />And it wasn&#8217;t a lot of code, if I remember correctly. It was easy to, if you wanted to just pull it into your own code base, it wasn&#8217;t a huge, it was one of those small plugins that do a lot, that can do a lot of lifting, but code-wise, it wasn&#8217;t like, oh, this is so big that there&#8217;s no way we can bring this into our own code base. It was simple. So it was good. It was easy for other developers to just look at what he did and bring it in.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I think context is important here for people who aren&#8217;t familiar. So what the Posts 2 Posts plugin did was it allowed you to create many relationships between posts. And as we know, or you may not know if you&#8217;re listening to this, posts are everything in WordPress pretty much. So pages are posts. Posts are posts.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />It&#8217;s like the core data type of WordPress.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />WooCommerce orders are post types.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, everything&#8217;s a post type, which is why the scaling issue that we basically were beating the dead horse of the high-performance order tables.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Yeah, now that high-performance order storage exists, it&#8217;s not quite a post type anymore for orders, which is a good thing. Right.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I was thinking about that too. You were describing your data model earlier and I was like, oh, I wonder how you were saying, I mean, you&#8217;ll have issues like scaling with anything with WordPress. You were talking about 500 accommodations and 80 tours, and that can have an impact as well on performance.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />With the importer, it does in time. So you can imagine the number of images that get imported into the database for each listing and all of that. So that&#8217;s something where we&#8217;ve learned how to manage the larger sites. Most smaller sites, it&#8217;s not an issue on the larger sites. We manage those on a case-by-case basis. But yeah, the post-to-post really helped us create the relationships. So for example, if you import a tour, you&#8217;ll have those accommodation items connected. You&#8217;ll also connect destinations. Destinations are hierarchical, like pages are hierarchical where you&#8217;ve got a top level and a sub-level. So a destination is to the top level is a country and the sub-level is a region. And those have different templates. So if you were on a country, you don&#8217;t display accommodation, but you do display featured tours. Tours move through a country, they also move through a region, but accommodation would only display on a region template, for example.</p>



<p>So yeah, one of the next things that we&#8217;ve got planned is obviously with all of this kind of data, searching for the information for the end user is critical. And we&#8217;ve used FacetWP for a long time and sometimes SearchWP, although I&#8217;m not sure that that helps the performance very much. It does sometimes help having a search engine. But FacetWP is a great plugin for our needs. So we built a little integration to the classic plugin. Now they have a block. It&#8217;s just really for short codes. It&#8217;s not really a true block, and we do some styling around that. Ideally, what I want to be doing with in the future, and it&#8217;s on our roadmap, is something like Woo filters where you&#8217;ve got your active filters, your price slider, filter by post type, filter by taxonomy, filter by featured, and something that we have that filtering on archives being your top level or category top level for a post type being all tours or a category archive.</p>



<p>And those filters can be relevant to that post type or that category. But then what happens when you search globally, because a lot of people want to search the site globally. So then we&#8217;ve come up with a solution using Facet WP where one of the filters will be content type. So say that user does a search in the header for Cape Town where I&#8217;m from, and it comes up with blog posts, pages, destinations, tours, accommodation reviews, special offers, and maybe a team members even attached to mentions Cape Town. So then that filtering allows you to filter by content type. So that&#8217;s something we haven&#8217;t started with that yet, but I mapped everything out for it today actually while I was chatting about things with my developer.</p>



<p>Then the checkout block is something I want to start pulling apart as an inquiry because I would like customers in the future, or not customers, but users of the plugin in the future, not to have to depend on a form plugin. And I was thinking that if we could do something like a checkout block, but an inquiry block where I drop it into either a section on the page or a mode or something like that, that would be really great to post that information to a post type like orders, but it would be inquiries. And if you think about the block bindings API, so if you&#8217;ve got a single tour, we&#8217;ve managed to get the vast majority of fields to output properly.</p>



<p>One thing I&#8217;m not sure how my developer is going to solve, but he has a plan is as I mentioned, that repeatable field, we have repeatable fields for gallery images as well. So if you add an image, you need to add alt information, alt tags, you need to add maybe a caption or you add a host of info. So that part that&#8217;s on the roadmap. But we are very happy with the first part of the rebuild. A lot of it was done via the site editor and I did that and with the help of my developer. Then once I designed all the layouts, he would help me add some of the block bindings code to the plugin, then I&#8217;d work with it a little bit. I&#8217;d do some designs, he&#8217;d take my block templates, he&#8217;d put them into the plugin, and then I&#8217;d do some more and back and forth like that. So it&#8217;s been a really fun journey and amazing to push the limits of the site editor.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Yeah, because that&#8217;s all relatively new too.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Do you feel it&#8217;s stable enough? Like you worry that they&#8217;ll, one of the things that with the Gutenberg experiment is that things have not been always that stable.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />So one of the things that I&#8217;m a little bit worried about now, we&#8217;ve looked into it, and again, my worry has a plan for that, but that is the change of the theme to theme JSON 3, where there are now defined spacing values that are within the theme JSON and or name spaces. I&#8217;m not sure what the correct terminology is. And also for font sizes or font names, should I say the sizes? You can decide because when we started last year, I was in discussion with Carolina who had done an audit of a hundred block themes, and she had taken the average of different naming for both spacing and for font sizes. So they&#8217;ve changed a few things from what the average in the community was, and that is going to probably cause HAC because then those changes, either we are going to do a find and replace in the database or I&#8217;m interested to see how we do that. And I just redeveloped my company website, so I spent a lot of time setting font sizes and setting spacing and using our own theme JSON values. So I imagine that&#8217;s going to take some time to refactor.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />So it&#8217;s my understanding that it only uses the new defaults if there&#8217;s nothing set in the theme already. So it shouldn&#8217;t override anything.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />No, it won&#8217;t. But I&#8217;m somebody who likes to do things the WordPress way, and I would like future sites that we develop to use the new naming space namespace. And I think rather following what the standards are than trying to do your own thing is a better approach. And it&#8217;s becoming much easier to do that with theming, with block themes now, before it was the Wild West with themes, I mean classic themes that developed their own options frameworks, and that was a nightmare. So I want to steer clear of that sort of thing.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Yeah, I think we&#8217;re finally getting out of the world where the theme could be a kitchen sink theme, right? Where it included a whole bunch of functionality that wasn&#8217;t in any way related to anything it needed to be. And so I think we&#8217;re finally moving away from that with block themes, and hopefully we&#8217;ll get away from the world where people had this necessity to package 482 plugins with their theme just to</p>



<p>make it look like it had more functionality than it did because that&#8217;s been a horrible practice the whole time. And that&#8217;s what I call a kitchen sink theme, right? It&#8217;s everything and the kitchen sink.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Indeed.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Those are really, really horrible practices to just have a theme do more than theme, right? That&#8217;s plugin territory and always should have been, but we ended up building themes that did way more than just the visual theming of a site. And so I think this starts to refocus themes as being themes and not theme plus functionality. Patterns are a theme-related thing. And the ability to set patterns in your theme JSON for your theme and share patterns that you&#8217;ve created in the pattern library is huge, right? That gives us new design capability. It doesn&#8217;t relegate us to only being able to use the things that are available inside the available blocks. We now have these groupings of patterns that are also available. And it looks like in your theme, you have a number of patterns. They actually look really great, and you have all of these available to make sure that people have all the building blocks they need, plus all of these design templates to start from as they&#8217;re building.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Yeah, the patterns were an interesting journey for us when we started. We didn&#8217;t know what to do to be quite honest. Now we have a much better concept of how we could use patterns and what we need to use them for. So the patterns that are in our C1 WordPress dot org are quite literally following what a lot of people in last year were doing. Frost wp, for example, was our inspiration. So then we made some changes to our color scheme and the patterns aren&#8217;t looking great at the moment, so I&#8217;m busy working on some patent changes for next week&#8217;s release and we&#8217;re going to be sorting out colors and that sort of thing. As we were talking about earlier, the learning i dopamine hits, well, it was a bit of a light bulb moment when I started creating some patterns for our own company website in the most recent rebuild. And now I know what full page patterns I want to create, and those full page patterns are going to be made up of useful smaller patterns, not just random team patterns and random testimonial patterns and things like that. I know what I want now. I just need to finish building them.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />I think the other really cool thing I saw that you&#8217;ve done is you&#8217;ve actually released a Figma design system document that fits alongside your plugin and it&#8217;s a design system in general. You have a style guide, but you&#8217;ve made extensive use of Figma variables. And I think that&#8217;s huge because I&#8217;ve been digging further and further into Figma lately. I had a baseline knowledge, but I&#8217;m really digging into components and how creating components with variants works and being able to build a library of interactive things that you can build your prototypes with. And the power is just so deep in what Figma can do. So seeing that you&#8217;ve built a toolkit that&#8217;s built very similarly to the way that I&#8217;m trying to do the work that I do right now in Figma is pretty cool.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />That was an interesting journey as well, because we started the Figma file last year and we created three separate files, a style guide file, a WordPress file, and a WooCommerce file because we thought that was a good idea to separate them. It would be if you were in a large organization doing a large design system for IBM or something like that, or Uber, A lot of them do these separate files, and that&#8217;s where I took some of my inspiration from. But then this year we decided when we did a radical upgrade on the design system to merge everything into a single file, and we started with the LSX design theme, and we called it the LSX design system.</p>



<p>And there we created two sections within it, major sections other than the style guide and the cover, and that was for the WordPress pages and elements. And we broke those down by components and then blocks and then patterns and template parts and full page layouts and templates. And then we did a WooCommerce section in a similar structure. And then recently after WordCamp Europe, as I mentioned, they really liked what we were doing. So I got the idea to showcase what we&#8217;re doing with WooCommerce in a prototype. And my teammate, Zared, has done the most incredible prototype. The Woo prototype actually allows you to add to cart and you can add up to four products to your mini cart. You can view the mini cart, you can empty the mini cart, you can search. It&#8217;s insane. And we really pushed the limits of variables.</p>



<p>And last year, none of that was actually possible because what we were researching was the lead designer, I forget his name right now, the lead designer from GitHub was working on design tokens and it was a separate system. And we stumbled, I stumbled upon it through the WordPress vip.com websites and their blog where they were doing stuff in Figma and then exporting to theme JSON and pretty much populating the theme JSON with the colors and fonts and values that you would need or that you were working on in Figma. That was really powerful. But now this year, Figma has next leveled it. And when we started on the LSX tour operator design system, we put so much work into the variables and the naming conventions and all of that, we forked the file on the LSX design file, and we came up with that as a basis for the tour operator plugin came up with new colors because it has a different color scheme. We&#8217;ve gone from more of a safari color scheme. And then we left the Woo prototype in there while we were generating the tour operator prototype. We could only start that obviously once we&#8217;d finished all the templates for a tour operator.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s been an interesting revelation because the WooCommerce prototype was very much variable heavy and quite technical and interactive. Whereas the tour operator one is more of a clickable prototype. There&#8217;s less that you can do with it. We don&#8217;t add anything to a cart. We also don&#8217;t really need to test doing filling in a checkout form or something like that. So that sort of thing is unnecessary. And we decided to focus on creating a very clear prototype design that will guide us for the coming months of our development on the tour operator plugin. So that&#8217;s, I&#8217;ve got to say, been very rewarding and satisfying. My teammate, Zared, has in the space of four months, gone from zero Figma knowledge to advanced Figma design. He wasn&#8217;t even a designer before.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />That&#8217;s awesome. That&#8217;s awesome. Now I want to be an advanced Figma person. All I&#8217;ve had is Figma stuff shared with me. And then I just look at it a bit and it&#8217;s like that&#8217;s the extent of my interaction is with Figma. I&#8217;m kind of hyped up just hearing you talk about it.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />It&#8217;s really, it&#8217;s amazing. And their videos on the YouTube channel, their own videos are incredible. They all come with Figma files, workspace files, you can learn so much. And unfortunately, they made a radical interface change this week. I think it was this week. I opened it up on Monday I think it was, and I was like, what&#8217;s happening? Where is everything? My teammates had the same thing. We needed to get stuff done, and the two of us were faffing trying to figure out, oh, where&#8217;s this? And where&#8217;s now we&#8217;ve got it. But it was the most radical interface change I&#8217;ve seen in an application in ages.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Yeah, they announced all of that at Config that they were going to be changing the UI considerably. And just to bring this full circle to where we started today with talking about history, I have known Sho Kuwamoto, who is the VP of product at Figma, and I&#8217;ve known him for a very long time. He was the senior director of engineering at Adobe for the tools portion of Flex and was very responsible for the creation of Flash Catalyst, which was a design tool for the Flex framework. And so he&#8217;s been at Figma now for nine years. And so a lot of the beauty of what Figma is came out of learnings that happened in the Flash world. And so very, very cool stuff. And we are now seeing the benefit of all of that history. And so if you are interested in any way in learning a little bit about that history, there was a session during Config, which is Figma&#8217;s conference for those of you who are listening who don&#8217;t know about the impact of Flash on Figma and in general on the world. And so if you want to see where all of this stuff that we&#8217;re doing now came from back in the final days of we were innovating very quickly, and all of those innovations JavaScript has finally caught up to. So there&#8217;s been a very large gap in time that the things that we used to do in Flash have not been possible, or at least not as easy to do by any means. And so now we&#8217;ve gotten to a point where it&#8217;s all come full circle and tools like Figma exist because of that history. So really, really cool stuff. So I think that&#8217;s a really good spot to start to wrap up here today. It&#8217;s been really great getting to know some of your processes here. And I&#8217;m sure we could probably talk for another hour or two, but I think that Bob would give us trouble.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />We never got to the questions I have from pre-show. So definitely.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />I think that Bob might get in trouble if we keep him much longer. So I&#8217;m trying to not hashtag Bug Bob too much. I&#8217;m still trying. It&#8217;s going to happen. So if you&#8217;re listening to this and you want to help me make Bob smile, just post something with hashtag Bug Bob, and let&#8217;s see if we can get a whole bunch of things in his inbox. Go ahead and tag him in too @BobWP and let&#8217;s have some fun with that. But it&#8217;s really a remarkable thing that you&#8217;ve built so much on the new functionality that&#8217;s</p>



<p>in the block editor, the block bindings API is very new. A lot of these things are cutting edge, and it&#8217;s really cool to see some of that happening. And so I think it would be great to have another conversation at some point in the future. But before we do that, let&#8217;s go ahead and wrap today up. So Ash, where do people go to find you on this collection of tubes we call the internet?</p>



<p>Ash:<br />So our company website would be a good place. We&#8217;ve got LightspeedWP Agency, that&#8217;s for more agency-related things, or our product website, which is LSX design on the web. Generally, our social profiles are Lightspeedwp. So if you look at GitHub, YouTube, Twitter, those three are all LightspeedWP and Facebook and Instagram are LightspeedWPdev.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Very cool. And before we close up here, I just generally ask Carl if he has a final question.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />We got to save Bob today. We got to save Bob.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Okay.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I was just excited by the Figma stuff.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />It&#8217;s really neat.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />I lit up at that because I was just like, for me, I think, and probably for a lot of developers and even yourself before you got into it, Figma for me is like, it&#8217;s a designer tool. You do mockups with it, and that&#8217;s about it.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Well, I&#8217;ve posted two blog posts yesterday. I posted a blog post on announcing the new LSX tour operator design system and our process and a number of things just to explain more about how we got to the end point. And then today I posted a blog post kind of in preparation for this, about our journey from classic to cutting edge. That&#8217;s what I called it.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Bob will link those in the show notes.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Exactly. So there&#8217;s a lot more information there on exactly what you wanted to know.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />Very cool. Yeah, I&#8217;m sure that there will be a lot of people that have an interest in the other things that you&#8217;ve done here. Those blog posts are great resources. That&#8217;s part of what I was going through while I was asking questions here. And we will link some other things to the show notes for this show that we&#8217;ve talked about, things like FacetWP and that new store designer in WooCommerce and some of the other stuff. But yeah, I really appreciate the time you spent to talk with us about your process here. These are always really interesting conversations, and I&#8217;m glad that we were able to dig deep on some of the things. Let&#8217;s talk again in the future here. We&#8217;ll work out when, and we&#8217;ll have you back to talk some more.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Well, thanks for letting me talk about my passions, and it was an absolute blast. You guys are very interesting, and I&#8217;m sure we could go on forever.</p>



<p>Zach:<br />We could. Well, as always, if you have any ideas for what you&#8217;d like to hear here on the Woo DevChats, Carl and I and Mike and Marcel are all open to ideas to hearing your feedback. So again, that&#8217;s hashtag Bug Bob on every social media platform, just to let him know what you want to hear or go to DotheWoo.io and let us know there. And we really appreciate the fact that you sit here and listen to Carl and I geek out with a guest every month. So thank you for being here, Ash. It&#8217;s been great getting to know you and we will talk soon.</p>



<p>Ash:<br />Cheers.</p>



<p>Carl:<br />Talk soon.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Woo DevChat</em></strong>, hosts <strong>Zach and Carl</strong> chat with <strong>Ash Shaw from LightspeedWP</strong> about the evolution of WordPress development and his journey in the tech industry. </p>



<p>Ash shares insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating cutting-edge features like block bindings and APIs into WordPress plugins. They look into the inspiration drawn from WooCommerce for the LSX tour operator plugin and discuss the significance of community and continuous learning in tech. </p>



<p>The conversation highlights the importance of adapting to new technologies, the power of open-source communities, and the pushing the boundaries of what&#8217;s possible in WordPress development.</p>



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



<p><strong>Integration Challenges and Innovations</strong>: Ash Shaw discusses the integration of cutting-edge features like block bindings and APIs into WordPress plugins, specifically the LSX tour operator plugin.</p>



<p><strong>Inspiration from WooCommerce</strong>: WooCommerce served as a significant inspiration for Ash&#8217;s development process, highlighting how it influenced the rebuilding of his plugin.</p>



<p><strong>Evolution of WordPress Development</strong>: The conversation delves into the evolution of WordPress, focusing on the transition from classic PHP-based themes to modern block-based themes.</p>



<p><strong>Community and Continuous Learning</strong>: The importance of community involvement and continuous learning in the tech industry is emphasized, with Ash sharing his journey from attending WordCamps to organizing them.</p>



<p><strong>Figma Design System</strong>: Ash highlights the creation of a Figma design system for their plugin, showcasing the power of Figma variables and components in developing interactive prototypes.</p>



<p><strong>Faceted Search Integration</strong>: The use of FacetWP for advanced search capabilities in WordPress sites is discussed, including plans to further enhance this functionality.</p>



<p><strong>API Consumption and Data Management</strong>: The benefits of consuming APIs for data management are explored, including the importation and caching of data from external sources like whereto.com.</p>



<p><strong>Impact of ADHD on Learning and Productivity</strong>: The hosts and Ash touch on how ADHD influences their learning processes and productivity, finding ways to leverage it positively in their work.</p>



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



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



<li><strong><a href="https://lightspeedwp.agency/">LightSpeedWP.agency</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightspeedwp/">LightSpeed on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://github.com/lightspeedwp/">LightSpeed on Github</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://lightspeedwp.agency/streamlining-design-and-development-with-figma/">Streamlining Open Source Development with Figma at LightSpeed</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://lightspeedwp.agency/from-classic-to-cutting-edge/">The re-birth of the LSX Tour Operator plugin</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://lightspeedwp.agency/announcing-the-new-lsx-tour-operator-design-system/">Announcing the new LSX Tour Operator Design System</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 06 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:87:"Do The Woo Community: Let’s Talk WordCampUS 2024 with Julia, Aaron, Katie and Bernard";s: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=85016";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://dothewoo.io/lets-talk-wordcampus-2024-with-julia-aaron-katie-and-bernard/";s: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:41723:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>BobWP:<br />Well, today&#8217;s show, of course, is a special show because there is a huge event just around the corner, and not only do I have wonderful guests here, but this is a very, not the first time, but we have one of our sponsors send somebody here virtually as a guest host, Bernard Meyer. How do you like this? How do you like being a co-host?</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />It is my first time and 30 seconds in, it is one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It&#8217;s only going to get better.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, so why don&#8217;t you just give a quick intro of who you are because this is really the first time you&#8217;ve been on the podcast.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />Yeah. So my name is Bernard Meyer. I&#8217;m the Senior Director of Communications and Creative at Omnisend. Omnisend is one of the sponsors for WordCamp US. Actually, WordCamp US will be our one-year anniversary of WordCamps. We just started last year at WordCamp US 2023, so this will be a full-year cycle. We are excited. Each WordCamp has been even better. This will be my first time at WordCamp US, so I&#8217;m expecting amazing things only because of what our CEO and VP of Marketing said about the last WordCamp US. According to what I heard, this is going to be even better. I&#8217;m also a contributor on the marketing team and the media core team and an organizer on the WordCamp Asia communications team. So I&#8217;m deep in there and, yeah, that&#8217;s my short version.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Very cool. Now, we have three of the organizers here as we usually do on Do the Woo for the flagship WordCamps. We always love to get that pumped up. We got to start talking about this. Everybody&#8217;s excited. I&#8217;m flying all the way from Portugal. I will say that I still question why they waited until I moved from the Pacific Northwest before putting a WordCamp up there, but I have my suspicions, and that&#8217;s for another entire podcast, so we won&#8217;t get into that part of it. Anyway, we&#8217;re going to have our three guests introduce themselves and we&#8217;re going to dive into WordCamp US. So let&#8217;s start with Katie.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Hi all. I&#8217;m Katie Richards. I am one of the four folks on the lead organizing team for WordCamp US this year. This is my first time on the lead team. Last year I was involved with WordCamp US as the lead of the PR and comms team. So naturally this year, I am working with PR and comms, but also with the volunteers and the photography teams, trying to make sure that we have enough folks on the ground to make this event awesome and everyone knows what they need to know to have a successful event. When I&#8217;m not doing WordCamp stuff, I am the project manager of the community growth team at A2 Hosting.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Cool. Julia.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />Hello. Well, it&#8217;s a delight to be here and I last met in Taiwan at WordCamp Asia over a really lovely dinner, so it&#8217;s good to see you again, Bernard. My name&#8217;s Julia Golomb and I also am part of the lead four for WordCamp US along with Katie and Aaron who are here, and then Sandy Edwards who&#8217;s not on this recording today. And I am sponsored by Automattic to contribute full-time to the WordPress community team.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />All right, and last, but very not least, Aaron.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />So I&#8217;m Aaron Campbell. I&#8217;m also on that lead four team for WordCamp US. I&#8217;ve been in the WordPress space a long time, probably, I guess, going on almost 20 years now, contributing to the project for maybe 18 of those. I used to contribute mostly through code and now I contribute mostly through things like organizing events like WordCamp US, things like that. When I am not organizing WordCamp US, I am Director of Product at A2 Hosting.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Alright, excellent. Well, let&#8217;s start first with Portland, Oregon. So tell us about Portland, Oregon. I could probably say a few things. I actually lived right between Portland and Seattle for many, many, many, many years. I&#8217;ve been to Portland a few times. Portland. What is special about Portland or what do you want to share about Portland?</p>



<p>Julia:<br />I am happy to start because I love Portland, Oregon. As a city, I make an effort to visit every single year because one of my best friends lives there and there really the nature is what stands out to me. So there are mountains and rivers and the coast. The Pacific Coast is a couple hours west of Portland, but just within the city, you can find hiking and beautiful views and also incredible food. Portland is really well known as a foodie hub and a coffee hub. So everyone who&#8217;s coming to WordCamp US, I encourage you to venture out around Portland to find some great spots for dinner, and I have no doubt that everyone will be having some fabulous coffee while you&#8217;re in town too.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />I have to agree with Julia. It&#8217;s a beautiful place. The food and the coffee definitely speak to me, if you will. I love it. I definitely take a little bit more of the kind of pragmatic approach to describing the city in that I feel like it really fits our needs for a conference as well. And it&#8217;s not easy to find a place for a conference like WordCamp US. It&#8217;s not a hundred thousand person conference, but we&#8217;re also pretty big now, and it can be hard to find a place and we bring in a global audience, right? Finding a place that can fit us, that can serve our needs that everybody can travel to easily. It&#8217;s a big ask and Portland really stepped up for us this year. The city itself is helping us in a lot of ways. They put a lot of effort into making sure that conferences can be held at this conference center and interact well with all the hotels and shops and whatnot around. I&#8217;m really excited just that they have been able to pull together this experience for us and for everybody attending.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Katie, have you ever been to Portland?</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I have not. Oregon is the one state on the west coast that I have not been to and I am very excited to check it off my bucket list, but I am excited for this event in Portland for all of the reasons that Julia and Aaron have mentioned, but also knowing that this is the first of two years that we get to be in the same venue, the same location, get to know the city. I think it&#8217;s going to really enhance our experience this year, but also next year as we regather and kind of have a homecoming.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />I also want to add that the venue where WordCamp US is taking place this year is absolutely gorgeous. It was just renovated in 2019 through a $40 million renovation project. It&#8217;s a super sustainable building. I think maybe I want to say Lead Platinum, which in the US is a certification for building sustainability. So it&#8217;s just a really nice place to be, and I&#8217;m excited to get to spend several days in such a beautiful space.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />I had a question. So for WordCamp EU, we did a little music video and we were thinking about doing something at Omnisend for Portland and I grew up in Miami and the furthest north I&#8217;ve been to the west coast, but the furthest north was like San Francisco. So I don&#8217;t know much about Portland except I had two things in my head, nature and coffee. So I&#8217;m happy to know that it&#8217;s a foodie culture as well. But there was one slogan when I was looking at Portland that I was wondering about it&#8217;s Keep Portland Weird. Is that a strong character of Portland or a good description or is that something that&#8217;s minimal?</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />I think one of the cool ways that I see that coming through in Portland is the push for unique everything. Essentially fewer chains and more unique. So in my experience in Portland, and I maybe have not had as many as some of the others here, but restaurants that you just can&#8217;t find anywhere else, experiences that you can&#8217;t find anywhere else. To me that&#8217;s the weird part of keep it weird. And as someone who loves to experience through their unique food especially, I found that particularly fantastic that you didn&#8217;t have to sort through a million chains that I can already get at my home in Oklahoma. There was plenty of unique stuff there, so I&#8217;m excited for our guests to be able to experience the same.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />I also want to add that there is a light rail that runs through Portland and so there&#8217;s good public transit to get directly from the airport. You just get on this light rail train and take it from the airport to the venue. The Oregon Convention Center and the official WordCamp US hotel is directly across the street from the venue, and so you can go from your hotel to the airport and vice versa via public transit. I think it&#8217;s, I want to say, a $2 ticket. So people, of course, there&#8217;s rideshare available in Portland and people can use that, but there&#8217;s also the light rail as an option for getting around.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />I think keeping it weird, what I love about that is it&#8217;s not only Portland&#8217;s goal, but I think what Aaron said, it&#8217;s a suggestion to everybody visiting. So it&#8217;s like, yeah, be unique and there&#8217;s just little different parts of Portland that you&#8217;ll find uniquely weird in one way or another and how you define weird, that can be something different for everyone, but I think that a lot of WordPressors will fit in well there. So I want to hear more about the actual venue. So let&#8217;s go from Portland, zero in on the venue. You talked a little bit about it, Julia, but there seems to be a lot of buzz around the venue. I&#8217;d love to hear from all three of you what it is that excites you about this venue, even though I don&#8217;t know if any of you have had a chance to visit it, but just from what you&#8217;re doing</p>



<p>through research and planning.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />I have not had a chance to visit the venue. I have had the chance to watch some walkthrough videos that some of our folks have put together. There are a number of things that really excite me about this venue, though. My excitement really started to build when our designer, Sam, was pulling together some of the design concepts for our WordCamp US site this year and was just pulling up photos from the venue to use as inspiration and kind of the way that they&#8217;ve brought a lot of that nature feel of the Portland area inside the venue. It was exciting, it was fun, it is going to be a really nice place to be, and then it continued to grow as I saw just how much space we&#8217;re able to get at this venue, something that we have struggled with over the last couple of years, getting enough space that&#8217;s all close together for us to have our talks and our sponsors and all of our people, a couple thousand people all in one, I guess, kind of a cohesive group.</p>



<p>And this year we have that. I&#8217;m super excited about how much we&#8217;re going to be able to do in the space, how much we&#8217;ve been able to open things up to sponsors to be more creative, more space for them to be and for how we can bring everyone together and not have to have some chunks of our talks or sponsors or whatever really far away from everyone else. We can have lots of space and have it all in one place. And then the last thing that I want to point out that&#8217;s been super exciting is the sustainability of the venue. And Julia brought this up and can probably speak a little bit more to it, but it&#8217;s not just that the venue is sustainable in the way it was built or the way that they operate. They hold us to a sustainability standard as well, and it&#8217;s been really nice having them come alongside us in that and help us figure out how we can have a 2000 person event, have our sponsors still have the impact that they want, and be as good to the environment as we can in the process. So sustainable materials, they&#8217;ve been really good at helping us do that.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I think the thing that I&#8217;m most excited about over last year as far as the venue goes is that the space makes sense for us. We don&#8217;t have to move floors to get to additional conference spaces. Everything is kind of close by. It&#8217;ll be a natural flow in and out of programming rooms. Looking at it from a sponsor&#8217;s perspective, I&#8217;m really excited about what the sponsor hall is going to look like and the interactions we&#8217;re going to be able to have with attendees as they come in and out, which is really fun. I&#8217;m also excited that we haven&#8217;t mentioned this, I think, that the conference hotel for those who have purchased a ticket, it&#8217;s in your confirmation, you can book your hotel room. It&#8217;s right across the street, so as you leave your room in the morning to grab your coffee, you&#8217;re going to run into WordCamp attendees. You&#8217;ll be walking across the street with folks that you&#8217;ll be sitting in sessions with later. Having that sense of closeness gives it more of a summer camp vibe. We&#8217;re going to be eating and hanging out with and just being around all of our WordCamp community friends for several days, and that&#8217;s incredibly exciting.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />So how about if we take this a day at a time? We have four days and I&#8217;ll start with day one, contributor day. So I want to hear not only about contributor day for people that don&#8217;t know what contributor day is and the opportunities for them, but if there is anything unique to this contributor day.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />I guess that one&#8217;s on me again because the mentor for the contributor team, this contributor day team this year. First of all, what are contributor days? To me, they&#8217;re a big part of what makes our WordPress project continue forward in a healthy way. We&#8217;re a mostly volunteer-driven project, and people&#8217;s lives ebb and flow for all kinds of reasons. People can contribute heavily at some times and less at other times, but these days give us the chance to really mentor in and bring in new folks to continue that healthy flow of people into our project. And so these days, it&#8217;s not just about the work that gets done on that day, although that&#8217;s great, that&#8217;s good. It&#8217;s great that we get all of our teams together and can make some progress, write some code, write some documentation, whatever it is. But to me, the coolest thing is bringing the people together and the mix of the old folks that have been contributing for a long while and the new folks that have never contributed and get us all in the same space and working together.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s the coolest, most exciting thing about contributor days for me personally. To that end, what this one&#8217;s going to look like, we have lots of space. Like I said, we have a nice giant hall that we&#8217;re going to be able to have all the contributors in at one time, so that is going to facilitate a lot of that meeting the people that you haven&#8217;t had the chance to meet before, getting to know the people that you&#8217;ve maybe only ever known digitally through their username on Slack, getting that chance to sit across the table from one of them or work together on a project. And so we have plenty of space to do that. And then we have a number of breakout rooms that we&#8217;re going to have available so that smaller groups can go off into a slightly lower noise area to work on something heads down if they really want to for a while. We&#8217;re going to even try to schedule out some of the times for those rooms so that if there are specific projects that teams want to work on and want people from other teams to be able to join them, they&#8217;ll be able to in these breakout rooms.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />I can add that I&#8217;m definitely excited just not to be a sponsor, but to be probably leading the marketing table and just to be a contributor. I love that. It&#8217;ll be my third time leading, but I love that in the beginning there&#8217;s this very small quiet phase on contributor days and then within 15 minutes people start working, there&#8217;s this nice buzz and then they go to lunch and then they come back and then you have this big networking effect where people just crossing tables and they begin to really get into the work and they begin to get into the community. Especially when I look at new contributors, they go from pretty shy before lunch to pretty happy and active and comfortable in the second part. So I&#8217;m pretty excited about that for all WordCamps, I would say definitely for us.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, for me, I think it&#8217;s sometimes I spend more time often with the community table. I&#8217;ll spend time there or within the community team, but I think this year I&#8217;m going to choose to buzz around, a fly and be the fly on the wall and just listen in because so much for me isn&#8217;t about actually getting my head down and working on things, but I&#8217;d love to hear what&#8217;s going on and there&#8217;s some teams I&#8217;ve never really sat and listened to for a while, so I think that&#8217;s going to be my goal this time around. It sounds like the perfect kind of venue for it and the space for it. So yeah, a lot of great stuff that leads us into the next day. So this is actually different because everything we&#8217;re usually like, okay, contributor day, bam, then we got two days of the event. I would like to hear about the showcase day because this is pretty cool.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />Wednesday, September 18th, is Showcase Day, so it&#8217;s day two of WordCamp US and Showcase Day is something that&#8217;s brand new this year for WordCamp US. The idea is to showcase the most innovative, cutting-edge uses of WordPress. So we&#8217;ll have folks showing off websites that they&#8217;ve developed that use really cool applications of WordPress and not only sites, but also plugins and just anything within the WordPress ecosystem. I&#8217;m super excited about Showcase Day. I think of everything that I&#8217;m psyched about for WordCamp US, which is a lot. Showcase day is the number one, just the caliber or the quality of presentations that we have in store for that day is phenomenal. And I would encourage everyone who&#8217;s attending WordCamp US, you do not want to miss Showcase Day. It&#8217;s the place to be.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />I was actually going to tell Aaron that I&#8217;m pretty excited about Contributor Day, but I&#8217;m extremely excited about Showcase. It is the number one thing. I have a general rough idea of what&#8217;s going to happen, but I actually don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going to happen. And the way that Julia just mentioned that what they have in store is going to be amazing. I want to be there early just so I can secure a seat in the front and I want to stay there to use the bathroom before I go so I don&#8217;t move because I know that I&#8217;m going to get half the team to come leave the other half walking around and networking. But this is going to be something that we all have on our calendars and we&#8217;re fighting about who&#8217;s going to be able to show up or not.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />It&#8217;s definitely something that people are going to want to watch for the speaker and talk announcements that are going to be coming out very soon that will cover both the regular classic programming days that you were talking about Bob, as well as this showcase day. There&#8217;s going to be some really exciting stuff. I think that we can probably even talk a little bit to the kind of inspiration that launched this day last year. We had a really fantastic talk by NASA that was showcasing how they were using WordPress to run their site and they did a show-off, this is how we&#8217;re doing it. And then they also did a little bit of behind the scenes, this is how we did the thing. And it seemed like that was an extremely cool way of showing not just the big number that we always hear like, oh, WordPress powers 43% of the internet and it goes from these really big exciting sites down to everybody&#8217;s hobby site.</p>



<p>But instead it really dug into what are some of those, what is WordPress really capable of? What does some</p>



<p>of that 43% actually look like? And so we thought that worked great, let&#8217;s expand that out. Let&#8217;s give that a whole day. We are doing way more than one cool exciting site. There&#8217;s a ton of amazing stuff happening that&#8217;s powered by WordPress. And so we want to get the chance for the folks that are doing these cutting-edge, exciting, interesting, innovative things with WordPress to show us the sort of wow side of what they&#8217;re doing and then ideally some of them to even come in and show us how we did this amazing thing, but how could you do something similar? And so that&#8217;s how we&#8217;re trying to target this day, have people showing off the wow and then have some people also digging into the how ideally exciting us about WordPress and showing us how we can all level up to do that kind of exciting stuff.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />So we have Contributor Day, Showcase Day, and then we hit the big event for two days. Now I think how I&#8217;d like to take this is there&#8217;s so many pieces that happen during those two days. Let&#8217;s dive into it and I&#8217;d love to hear from all three of you on this.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I know we say this every year, but one thing that WordCamp US has done consistently well and then better every year is that we&#8217;ve got an incredibly diverse range of speakers and talks for those two programming days. And not only did we build programming days with diversity in mind, but they&#8217;re excellent quality talks. So what we will have available for folks to listen to and interact with is perhaps the best programming that we&#8217;ve put together so far, which is really exciting and something that we try to do year over year is intrude and learn lessons from other WordCamps and take those into account as we start building out our programming. And that was one of the things that I learned fairly quickly on joining the lead team this year is how little I know about what goes into planning WordCamps and how much thought and work goes behind the scenes before a schedule can be announced. So it was really cool to watch come together this year and then be extra proud of the product that&#8217;s coming out of it.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />There are two pieces that I want to highlight from our schedule this year that are different than last year and perhaps previous years. One is that we are weaving showcase day talks throughout the Thursday and Friday programming as well. And so the showcase talks will be, I believe they&#8217;ll be highlighted on the agenda in a different color just so folks know that it&#8217;s a way to have that thread woven not only on Wednesday Showcase day, but also throughout the Thursday and Friday programming. And then we also this year have included a networking hour in the schedule that&#8217;s at the end of the day on Thursday in the sponsor hall. And this is based on feedback that we&#8217;ve heard from WordCamp US attendees about really valuing the networking opportunities that they find at WordCamp US and wanting some more dedicated time to meet other folks who are there, whether that&#8217;s attendees, sponsors, speakers, and get to know them, get to connect with them on a meaningful level.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />And if you&#8217;re an introvert, that&#8217;s not something you need to be concerned about. We&#8217;re going to make it as easy as possible for folks who are perhaps a little less comfortable in those situations to find like-minded folks and connect with people who have similar interests and passions within the WordPress space.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />As an outgoing introvert, I really appreciate that. I like to talk to people, but it can be hard to figure out where my people are, I guess so to speak. Where are the people that I can bring value to that conversation or do my part or learn something new and interesting? And so we&#8217;re trying to bring the sponsors in on that a little as well. One of the great things about WordCamps is that our attendees, they&#8217;re really our primary focus. We try to keep things extremely affordable for them to attend to make sure that their experience is amazing. I try not to talk about the money too much. It&#8217;s not what everybody wants to hear about, but every attendee costs us far more than they pay for their ticket to attend, and the sponsors are what make that possible. But not only do our sponsors come to us with the money to make this possible for all these attendees, they also come with often experts from their companies that have a wealth of knowledge to impart to our attendees.</p>



<p>And so at times like these networking hours, it gives us the chance to leverage some of those experts and say, hey, if you want to talk about this thing, there are experts at this sponsor booth. Y&#8217;all can go hang out during networking hour and pick their brain, learn from people who are managing thousands or tens of thousands of servers, how to better manage your server. There are those people around and we&#8217;re going to be able to make that available to our attendees during networking hour.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Bernard, you said this is your one-year anniversary as a sponsor for Omnisend, and to me that&#8217;s kind of mind-blowing because it feels like you&#8217;ve been around a lot longer than that and more WordCamps than that. I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m thinking, wow, that&#8217;s a lot that&#8217;s happened in that period of time. What does WordCamp bring to you as a sponsor and especially hearing all of this?</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />So I have two perspectives, have one as a sponsor and one as a sort of a contributor and a contributing member. So sometimes it&#8217;s a bit hard for me to separate those two, but both of them are related to people. I would say one on the contribution side. So of course there&#8217;s some challenges with contributing to WordPress, but every time you meet people in person, you get this surge of energy when you see like-minded people who are all working together, giving up their free time, sponsored or not, they&#8217;re giving up their time to build this thing, continue pushing it forward, and they put all of their passion into it. And I think that this is the basis for where we as sponsors see value because then you create a community of companies or plugins that also have the similar kind of philosophy. They have the same vibe.</p>



<p>They&#8217;re there of course to earn money and to make sales and all that, but they have at the basis it feels like they have this urge to help each other, just whatever it is. So we have a lot of people that we may not find any particular way to work with, but we just want to connect with them and network with them and keep in touch with them and just hope that at some point in the future we&#8217;ll find some business reason to stay in touch. But for the most part, the most valuable thing that we get there is that we network with people who are valuable based on their value, based on their intelligence, based on their passion. And then the business reason comes in a little bit second. And I think the other reason is that Omnisend started more in the Shopify ecosystem and that one, it is very interesting place, but it is pretty different because that one tends to be a bit more transactional, firstly on the surface.</p>



<p>And so there&#8217;s a lot of value placed on the size and scope of your business first and then whatever value you have, secondly. And here, no matter who you are, you can talk to Matt, you can talk to Josepha, you can talk to people who you may not have had any other opportunity to talk with before. And then you can find again places in which you can build that relationship later on. So I think for us from the first time, like I said, when our CEO and VP of marketing just attended WordCamp US, which was last year, they&#8217;ve come back with so much fire and every time we go to the WordCamps events, the flagships or the small ones, we have that fire. It is reignited again and again and again. So I think the value is one that we found one time and it is just continuous and it is always increasing. So it&#8217;s all of us an addiction, I would say everyone is fighting to go to the next WordCamp, and I think the team we&#8217;re sending keeps on getting bigger because everyone just wants to go. That&#8217;s hard to summarize, but I think people, that&#8217;s my word.</p>



<p>Aaron:<br />I love that. If we can be that place where it&#8217;s like, hey, come to WordCamp US, get fired up. Be the person that comes back to your team with a million great ideas and a fire behind you. I love that. I hope we&#8217;re that for all kinds of companies and people.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />I think that anyone who has any doubts or anyone who&#8217;s just a bit curious, the only thing I would say is, as Aaron said, the tickets for WordCamp are pretty cheap. Just go attend the WordCamp, go to the four days or the three days or just the two days, even just one day, just go to contributor showcase day and you will probably catch fire within two or three hours, I think. So any doubters, your doubts will be relieved pretty soon.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And I think that from someone that has been going to WordCamp since, I think my first one was 2010, and I&#8217;ve gone to various ones over the years. I&#8217;ve spent many years at what I call other conferences where like you said, they&#8217;re very transactional. And I think one of the things people need to remember is that when you walk up to a sponsor at WordCamp, the best thing about that is you&#8217;re not shoved in the face with a product. You actually get to meet the people behind the product. And when I moved into the WordPress space, that was one of the things that stood out most to me was I never felt like I got to really know anybody at a company through a conference because it was that. And you&#8217;re going to get to know people, you&#8217;re going to have good conversations. You&#8217;ll probably meet them later on at a party or you&#8217;ve already met them and you&#8217;re just reconnecting again. So you&#8217;re going to meet people, you&#8217;re going to talk to people, and you&#8217;re going to probably make friends</p>



<p>. It&#8217;s really valuable. And after all that is done, you go to all these side events, you&#8217;re going to go to breakfast and lunches and dinners and wander around Portland and drink craft beer and coffee and eat food. Then comes the social.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />Yes. I&#8217;m so glad you brought up the social. I was ready to talk about it.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />We&#8217;re there now, end of day four, and it is time for the social. Tell us about the social.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />Alright, our four days of WordCamp US conclude on the evening of Friday, September 20th, with the WordCamp US Social, which will be held at OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. And it&#8217;s a really cool museum on the river with a submarine, an old submarine that is in the river, and attendees can go into the submarine and tour it, which is pretty cool. There&#8217;s a planetarium programming running throughout the event, so people can pop in to see different planetarium films, and there&#8217;s going to be refreshments available. The most important thing to know is that this party, this WordCamp US social, is included with your WordCamp US ticket. Bring your badge. Your badge is your ticket for admission to the social. And if you have a guest with you who&#8217;s in Oregon traveling with you, maybe not attending the daytime programming, just buy them a ticket for WordCamp US. Make sure that you print their badge at the registration desk, and then that&#8217;s their ticket to join you as a plus one at the social. Everyone&#8217;s welcome. It&#8217;s going to be a really, really lovely event and an opportunity to get to relax and meet folks and see old friends.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Excellent. So we&#8217;re going to wrap up here and I think everybody&#8217;s excited. The thing is, probably people say, Bob, you don&#8217;t sound very exciting, but I&#8217;m holding it all inside me. That&#8217;s how I do my excitement. I never sound super overly excited, and I&#8217;m sure anybody here can attest to that. But yeah, I&#8217;ve got my flight booked, I&#8217;ve got my hotel booked. I will be staying right across the street.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />Bob, you&#8217;ve booked your flight, you&#8217;ve booked your hotel. Have you purchased your WordCamp US ticket?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Oh yeah, I did. And did I purchase the last one? That&#8217;s what I want to know.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />You did not purchase the last ticket. There are still tickets available. If you are listening to this and have not yet purchased your WordCamp US ticket, go to your computer right now and do that. Please get your ticket now. It&#8217;s really helpful for us as we&#8217;re planning to have a clear sense of numbers, and we have tons of space, so everyone who wants to come can, but just make sure you get your ticket as soon as possible.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And we talked about all the great sponsors and I could list them all, but please go to this site, make sure you visit all the sponsors, and if you want to be one of those great sponsors and all of us clamoring up to you, are there any spots left?</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yes, there are several spots left, and there is an interest form available on the website as well. So if you are thinking maybe I&#8217;d like to consider sponsoring this year, reach out, have a conversation with our sponsor team.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />In particular, we&#8217;ve got a couple of our lowest-cost sponsorship opportunities available for $5,000. You can have a presence in the WordCamp US sponsor hall, which means that a couple thousand people will be visiting your table. And it&#8217;s a great way to have that presence in the sponsor hall. That&#8217;s called the Our Author Level sponsorship.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Very cool. Well, first of all, I want to thank Bernard for co-hosting and also lending his perspective on the whole thing. Do make sure and visit the Omnisend Booth, find Bernard. Tell him what you thought about him as a co-host and if he should come back again.</p>



<p>Bernard:<br />It lived up to the expectations. It was the most fantastic 50 minutes of my life.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Excellent. And thank you three and the entire team. This is huge. It&#8217;s amazing what you pull off. There&#8217;s going to be all these volunteers helping you, and it&#8217;s just your hard work and everything just is, there&#8217;s so much gratitude.</p>



<p>Julia:<br />You mentioned volunteers, Bob. I think we also have a few volunteers&#8217; spots still available. So if somebody is listening to this and moved to contribute to WordCamp US as a volunteer while you&#8217;re actually there, send an email to us at WordCamp.org and let us know that you want to come as a volunteer.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Cool. Well, tons of opportunities. So yeah, go to us.wordcamp.org and the dates are September 17th through 20th. So it&#8217;s coming up real quick. I&#8217;m excited. Please come and say hi to me or find me somewhere. If you&#8217;re one of those volunteers that actually volunteered afterwards, come up and I&#8217;ll take you around and I&#8217;ll introduce you to Bernard because you&#8217;ll love the guy. And I&#8217;m so looking forward to this. And just want to thank all four of you for joining us for this particular episode. And yeah, we&#8217;ll see everybody at WordCamp US. So thank you very much.</p>
</div>




<p><strong>A special thanks to our sponsors who will also be sponsoring WordCampUS. Visit them on the WordCamp site.</strong></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsor/avalara/">Avalara</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsor/godaddy/">GoDaddy</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsor/hostinger/">Hostinger</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsor/omnisend/">Omnisend</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/sponsor/weglot/">Weglot</a></strong></li>
</ul>



<p>Welcome to a special episode of <strong><em>WordPress Event Talk</em></strong>, where we dive into the excitement and anticipation surrounding the upcoming <strong>WordCampUS 2024</strong>, taking place September 17-20.</p>



<p>In this episode, we have a unique treat for you as one of our sponsors, <strong>Omnisend</strong>, has sent their <strong>Senior Director of Communications and Creative, Bernard Meyer</strong>, to join <strong>BobWP</strong> as a guest host. And we are chatting with the three of the four organizer leads, <strong>Katie Richards, Julia Golomb and Aaron Campbell. </strong></p>



<p>They chat about everything you need to know about WordCamp US, from the host city,  Portland, Oregon, to the innovative Showcase Day, and the various programming and networking opportunities that await attendees. </p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a seasoned WordCamp veteran or a first-time participant, this episode is packed with valuable insights and behind-the-scenes details that will get you pumped up for the event. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Highlights of WordCampUS 2024</h2>



<p><strong>WordCamp US Overview</strong>: The upcoming WordCampUS event in Portland, Oregon, promises to be an exciting and memorable occasion. Our discussion highlights the unique aspects and attractions of Portland, including its stunning natural landscapes, vibrant food and coffee culture, and the city&#8217;s quirky charm encapsulated in the slogan &#8220;Keep Portland Weird.&#8221; </p>



<p><strong>Venue Details</strong>: The venue for WordCampUS is the Oregon Convention Center, which has recently undergone a $40 million renovation project. This sustainable building, certified with LEED Platinum, offers a beautiful and eco-friendly space for the event. Its convenient location includes a light rail connection from the airport and is directly across the street from the official WordCamp US hotel, enhancing accessibility and attendee experience.</p>



<p><strong>The Event</strong></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Day 1: Contributor Day</strong>:<br />Contributor Day is important for mentoring and onboarding new contributors to the WordPress project. It offers extensive networking and collaboration opportunities in a large, cohesive space with dedicated breakout rooms for focused work. This day is about more than just the work accomplished; it&#8217;s about building connections and fostering the WordPress community spirit.</li>



<li><strong>Day 2: Showcase Day</strong>:<br />A new addition this year, Showcase Day is designed to highlight the most innovative and cutting-edge uses of WordPress. Attendees can look forward to great presentations and demonstrations of websites, plugins, and applications within the WordPress ecosystem. This day aims to inspire and showcase the versatility and power of WordPress.</li>



<li><strong>Days 3 &amp; 4: Main Conference Days</strong>:<br />The main conference days promise a diverse range of speakers and talks, each offering excellent quality and insightful content. This year introduces a networking hour at the end of the day on Thursday in the sponsor hall, providing a dedicated time for attendees to connect with others, including sponsors, speakers, and fellow participants, fostering relationships.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Sponsorship and Community</strong>: Bernard Meyer shares his perspective on the immense value of sponsoring WordCamp US and the community it fosters. Unlike other transactional conferences, WordCampUS allows sponsors and attendees to connect on a personal level, building relationships that go beyond mere business interactions. This sense of community and shared passion is what makes WordCampUS special.</p>



<p><strong>WordCamp US Social</strong>: The event will conclude with a social gathering at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) on the evening of Friday, September 20th. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore the museum, including a submarine tour and planetarium programming. The social is included with the WordCampUS ticket, and attendees are reminded to bring their badges for admission. Guests can also join by purchasing a ticket, making it a perfect opportunity to relax and connect with others.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/tickets/">Get your ticket to WordCampUS</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/volunteering-at-wordcamp-us-2024/">Sign up as a volunteer</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/call-for-sponsors/">Sponsor WordCampUS</a></strong></li>
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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #105 – Gutenberg 18.9, Block Themes and WooCommerce";s: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=29640";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-105-gutenberg-18-9-block-themes-and-woocommerce/";s: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:48808:"<p>Ellen Bauer and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss Gutenberg 18.9, Block Themes, WooCommerce and more.</p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-105-gutenberg-18-9-block-themes-and-woocommerce/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-105-gutenberg-18-9-block-themes-and-woocommerce/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



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



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



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



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest: Ellen Bauer </h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://x.com/ellenbauer">On X (former Twitter) @ellenbauer</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.elmastudio.de/en/">ElmaStudio</a></li>



<li><a href="https://join.slack.com/t/woocommercecommunity/shared_invite/zt-2noqfhew6-7C9cJTwF8EnbfAlNEhv78g">Join WooCommerce Community Slack</a></li>



<li><a href="https://woocommerce.com/posts/woocommerce-in-2024-roadmap-update/">WooCommerce in 2024 and beyond: Roadmap update</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Video playlist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7EQuGoWcrS2ElPx3A_zrCsM5">Intermediate Theme Developer</a></li>



<li>Course: <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-theme-developer/">Intermediate Theme Developer</a></li>



<li>Course: <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/">Beginner WordPress Developer</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Upcoming Events</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>August 13&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302520686/">Developer Hours: Hello, Blocks! – An Introduction to Block Development</a></li>



<li>August 15: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/09/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-whats-next-in-gutenberg-2/">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about what’s next in Gutenberg (August 2024)</a></li>



<li>August 27: <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302512124/">Developer Hours: Building WordPress themes with the Create Block Theme plugin</a><br /></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Developer Blog</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/30/building-a-card-layout-with-a-hover-reveal-effect/">Building a card layout with a “hover reveal” effect</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/22/mixing-and-matching-styles-colors-and-typography-in-wordpress-6-6/">Mixing and matching styles, colors, and typography in WordPress 6.6</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 18.9 </h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-9-31-july/">What’s new in Gutenberg 18.9? (31 July)</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in active development or discussed</h2>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/61577">&nbsp;Add plugin template registration API #61577</a></p>



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



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



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



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



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



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



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, hello and welcome to our 105th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 18.9, a little bit of block themes, WooCommerce, and more. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress Open Source project sponsored by Automattic.</p>



<p>My special guest today is the wonderful Ellen Bauer, early adopter of blocks and block themes with themes from ElmaStudio, from New Zealand, temporarily from Bangkok, Thailand. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you, Ellen?</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer: </em>Thank you very much. I&#8217;m happy to be here. Yes, I&#8217;m in Bangkok right now, so I&#8217;m very good. Thank you. How are you, Birgit?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I&#8217;m good. I&#8217;m good. Munich&#8217;s getting really summer temperatures, so we&#8217;re 33 degrees already early in the morning. Well, not that early, but it&#8217;s really hot. And with apartments without air conditioning, we have fans.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Oh, that is great. I think that&#8217;s even hotter than Bangkok right now because here it&#8217;s the rainy season, so it&#8217;s coolish for Bangkok terms, maybe 29 or 30 degrees.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s similar.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Quite nice.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s probably humid too.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> It is. It is, yeah. But compared to two months ago, it&#8217;s actually really nice. So yeah, we are enjoying it. Another two weeks, then we will be back in New Zealand. Winter in New Zealand. So a change is coming up.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, you need some warm clothes there.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, I already ordered fleece sweaters. That will work.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So since we last talked, and it&#8217;s probably&#8230; Well, you and I met at WordCamp Europe, but since you were last on the Changelog, your responsibilities have changed quite a bit in the last few weeks. So what are you working on right now?</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, that is true. Changed a lot. So just after WordCamp Europe in Turin, I started as a product manager for WooCommerce, with Automattic now, which is very exciting and it&#8217;s a great responsibility and opportunity for me that I&#8217;m very excited about.</p>



<p>And everyone has been welcoming me so nicely and I&#8217;m still in the onboarding phase and it&#8217;s really, really fun at the moment and lots to do and I have lots of ideas too. My main responsibility is trying to increase block theme adoption for WooCommerce and there&#8217;s a lot to do still. So lots of work and lots of fun working on that. I&#8217;m really, really grateful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, just from my personal opinion, I think I couldn&#8217;t have chosen a better person to do all that.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I&#8217;m really happy that you&#8217;re my coworker and that you&#8217;re working on the WooCommerce things. So things are moving in the WordPress space. There are quite a few things happening and you can all learn about these other things on the other podcasts like Do the Woo, I don&#8217;t know. If you haven&#8217;t tuned into those podcasts, there are about 12 different shows with, I think, 20 different hosts, so that&#8217;s definitely something to look about, dear listeners.</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s also a WP Minute with Matt Medeiros. He has some great shows and commentary on the news in WordPress and here we stick to Gutenberg and what&#8217;s around blocks development and block themes.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>So the first announcement today is the videos for the Intermediate Theme Developer course on the Learning pathways on YouTube.</p>



<p>So the training team has been working on learning pathways for beginner, intermediate, and advanced and then build courses around it. So you could start with the beginner developer course and then go to the intermediate theme developer and then to the advanced. And all those courses or lessons in those courses are actually self-contained, so you could just pick and choose which one you want to learn about.</p>



<p>But the intermediate theme developer course, there are 32 videos and it&#8217;s covering everything from global styles and theme JSON template, template parts, patterns, style variations, block styles, you name it, what&#8217;s in block themes, but the course is also built around&#8230; It covers all also classic themes.</p>



<p>So for instance, the Loop or how to use the theme JSON in classic themes. So if you need some refresher on certain concepts, you definitely can watch them individually or use the course on <a href="http://learn.wordpress.org">learn.wordpress.org</a> to get it in sequence. I also will share the link to the beginner WordPress developer course, which has been published also a couple of weeks ago. Just want to remind you that that is there. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: We also have upcoming developer hours and I think that&#8217;s a really exciting topic for block developers on August 13, 3:00 PM UTC with the title Developer Hours, Hello Blocks and Introduction to Block Development. I think that&#8217;s a super interesting topic for everyone who hasn&#8217;t built blocks or just wants to get a refresher or update on it.</p>



<p>So blocks are used now with almost all WordPress projects and core blocks cover quite a wide range of things that you can do with them. You also have a lot of third-party block libraries available, but sometimes it&#8217;s just not enough and you need to build your own blog. I&#8217;ve been there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, you definitely have been there, yes.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: It&#8217;s really a lesson learned to try to build your own block and it&#8217;s actually way easier, I felt, for most cases, for most custom blocks compared to what I initially thought. And so we&#8217;ve come up a long way and you can learn in this developer hours how to build your own custom block from scratch, which is really cool. So there&#8217;s a meet up link for that in the show notes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, there was the developer hours. Do you really need a custom block? What are the alternatives to building custom blocks? So you decide it. Block styles are not enough. Block variations are not enough. Patterns with sync patterns, all rights are not enough. You need your own custom block because the core block doesn&#8217;t give you enough features or anything, but then you need to start from scratch. And if you haven&#8217;t started yet, this definitely gets you an in into the topic and the space.</p>



<p>So two days later, there will be a hallway hangout with Anne McCarthy and it&#8217;s about let&#8217;s chat about what&#8217;s next in Gutenberg. With WordPress 6.6 being out, the teams are already working feverishly on what they want to put into WordPress 6.7 and Anne McCarthy wrote about this one Hangout seeks to be another snapshot of what&#8217;s being worked on Gutenberg plugin to provide a broader awareness to more WordPress contributors and get feedback.</p>



<p>The hope is to come together early to talk about different features, flush out concerns sooner, and help more folks get involved and find ways to work better together. I know that there are quite a few things in the roadmap for 6.7. The official roadmap hasn&#8217;t been published yet, but watch out. I think after that hallway hangout, we will find something on the make blog. Are you excited about 6.7?</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yes, and I will definitely try to make that hallway hangout. I think I will be just, I think the first time back in New Zealand, so I hope I&#8217;m not too jet-lagged.</p>



<p>But I think that&#8217;s really exciting, and I appreciate Anne&#8217;s work of giving us an overview of things that are happening with her source of truth for the releases, they&#8217;re just amazing and so helpful for everyone who is busy and can&#8217;t catch up with everything happening because that&#8217;s happening so much.</p>



<p>I think I joined the last hallway hangout on what gave us a glimpse into the future and also being able to be shaping that future. So I hope lots of people can join.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I forgot to tell anybody when it&#8217;s going to happen. It&#8217;s going to be August 15th at 15:00 UTC, 3:00 PM UTC and I also share the announcement for that hangout in the show notes because it also lists what parts of the content of it, and it&#8217;s about data views of course, and it&#8217;s about sync patterns, it&#8217;s about canonical block examples.</p>



<p>The discussion hasn&#8217;t ended yet what a canonical plugin will be, but people are working on additional blocks for core, then gallery block grid layout, and then the Zoom out view definitely. And together with the advanced content only editing, those will be topics of that hangout and see the first iterations or discussions or heated discussions about it.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, I think also for WooCommerce, the concept of canonical blocks and having some of them, maybe for Woo blocks as well is really interesting and could help just filling some gaps that are there currently for block theme builders and just everyone working with blocks trying to build e-commerce sites. So yeah, that&#8217;s really exciting.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s one more announcement, which another developer hour and with the title, Building WordPress Themes With Create Block Theme Plugin, the create block theme plugin, which I think is so exciting and it&#8217;s happening on August 27 at 3:00 PM UTC and with Tammie Lister and you, Birgit.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yes, I really love the create block theme plugin and I get lots of questions from our team users or agency users, how they can use it to maybe create child themes or create new themes that are block themes easily. So I think that&#8217;s really exciting for small site builders and agencies to work with that plugin and learn about it more in the developer hour.</p>



<p>So the topics that you two will cover, and it sounds like a lovely learning session, is you will cover how to create a theme with a plugin from scratch, how to clone an existing block theme or create a child theme. That&#8217;s one of the questions I think I have a lot from people who have been working more with classic themes is do I even need a child theme? How do I create one from a block theme? How does it all work?</p>



<p>I think it&#8217;s still a new concept for many people, so that will be super useful. Then how to customize your theme in the site editor is also very good, I feel, because there&#8217;s still some confusion of what the site editor is actually doing, how to use it. So I think that will be so helpful for people, how media is used in templates and how you can manage media, how the plugin helps make themes, translation ready, that&#8217;s also one of the questions I have from people. That is all really, really helpful content that you will cover in that developer hour.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, yeah, the create block theme bridges the gap. We have three different design tools. One is coming through theme JSON, first is core and then there is the theme JSON from the theme, and then there are user changes in the site editor and they all come together on the site through the black box, I call the site the style engine. But the user changes, they all end up in the database.</p>



<p>And for a theme developer, if you want to grade the theme that you reuse someplace else, you need to get that out of the database into your theme JSON and that&#8217;s what this create block theme plugin is actually doing and then a lot of things around it. So you can export whatever you do in the site editor or your client is doing in the site editor, you can all then harvest that and put it back into the theme to maybe use on other sites or put it into version control or just have it on a test site or something like that.</p>



<p>So create block theme. So August 27th, 3:00 PM UTC, 15:00 UTC is definitely a place if you&#8217;re interested in that particular topic.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Community Contributions</h3>



<p>I wanted to also point our listeners, dear listeners to our developer blog because we have two new posts that might be interesting to you.</p>



<p>Damon Cook, he&#8217;s a developer relations manager or developer relations person from WP Engine. He published on the developer block building a card layout with a hover reveal effect, meaning in the short tutorial you learn how to add a block style to a core block. That&#8217;s always a great skill to have and then add additional CSS for animation. And it&#8217;s even interesting for content creators, you learn how to create a grid block with card style cover block.</p>



<p>So I just reviewed it and tested the code and it&#8217;s a real neat example on what is possible with the block editor. Even if the core doesn&#8217;t provide you within all the features like the animation, you could still add it in CSS in a block style. And similar to that is Justin Tadlock&#8217;s new post on the developer block, it&#8217;s mixing and matching styles, colors, and typography in WordPress 6.6, and he teaches us how to create custom color and topography only global style variations now with the new version.</p>



<p>So universe is expanding exponentially with all the style variations and where you can do section styles and then just offer different variations for certain sections. It&#8217;s really neat. There was also a hallway hangout where we kind of discussed that all previously, so I will share that link as well in the show notes.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: Yeah, I love just the&#8230; It&#8217;s an easy concept with the style variations and styles really get a lift different look on the front end. I really love it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, it&#8217;s not only on the front end, you also get it into the editor if you do it right. It puts it into the editor. So I did some basic, basic testings and I was able to just put in the JSON notation. You can just put a style variation in the styles&#8217; directory on your theme and it pulls it automatically in. You don&#8217;t have to worry about PHP or registering your CSS separately from editors.</p>



<p>It all comes in right away and it also uses those things in front end as well as in block editor and it&#8217;s just fabulous. There is some nice magic going on. I haven&#8217;t finished my post yet, but I&#8217;m going to write on the Gutenberg times about it, how to easy put a frame around your images and all that or different kind of frames or shadows and all that, how to just add it to a style and then grab it in the theme or WordPress grabs it from your styles&#8217; directory in the theme, so it&#8217;s really magic. All right.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> That is cool.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That&#8217;s really cool.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 18.9</h3>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> So yeah, let&#8217;s talk about the Gutenberg release 18.9. That&#8217;s really cool that it&#8217;s like 18 releases. Really, really great. So with this release, there were 245 PRs merged by 59 contributors and the release contains 84 enhancements and 72 bug fixes. That&#8217;s a lot of work. Really, really beautiful to see that coming together.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, don&#8217;t worry, we are not talking about every single one of them. Otherwise, we would be here another two and a half hours or three, but no.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> We&#8217;re wrapping it together.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, we&#8217;re wrapping it together. So the biggest changes are in the block library. That was more a quality of life changes that they added examples to the preview and previews to the blocks. There were a few blocks where you have them and then there are quite a few blocks where you don&#8217;t have them.</p>



<p>And they started to work in 18.8 And then 18.9 They continue it and now there are examples for the post author block, the post date block, we don&#8217;t call them that anymore. It&#8217;s the author block, the date block, the featured image block and the terms block when you have them in the insert. In code, they still have the prefix of post, but that prefix went away. But that&#8217;s definitely a quality of life change. So it makes the mystery, takes the mystery out of it. What is this kind of block? What does it do?</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> It&#8217;s very helpful. Then the query loop block got enhancements too. So the post list variation was removed, the convert, the post content type setting to a toggle group control. If there were a few items, then query loop changed the default query loop variations and set query loop to have the inherent value by default. Then I think the SoundCloud icon got updated in the social links block. Oh, that&#8217;s another block. No worries. Not in the query loop block anymore, but it also got an update.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, the icon was actually updated. On the query loop there, they have the inherent value by default is something that, I don&#8217;t know, it was a 50/50 chance that people get confused about it, what it does and it was not by default. Switched on so when you do the categories or so, it takes the inherent value from the query parameters, from the link where it came from, and sometimes that people get confused when they built their own query loops on pages.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> It actually confused me quite a lot in the beginning. I remember that and I never quite knew should I have it toggled on or off and I always had to test it out. I remember that got me always.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, and now you get confused the other way because they changed it around.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I feel. Yeah, probably. I always had to test it. I was like, why is it not working how I wanted it to work?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It wasn&#8217;t intuitive and I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s more intuitive now, but we will find out.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> It&#8217;s true.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So test it.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I&#8217;ll test it again too. I haven&#8217;t tested it</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And dear listeners, everything here is for testing. Test it out and chime in. And I&#8217;m just going to do a little side note here. On the WordPress Slack there is an outreach channel where we can discuss those confusing things. So if you are not quite sure how it&#8217;s supposed to work, come into the channel, discuss it with us.</p>



<p>Well, there are quite a few theme developers in there and we have about 800 people in the channel. Not all of them, most of them are lookers of course, like in any community. But there&#8217;s always somebody there who can help out and it&#8217;s quite a nice bunch and we have all been there that we tried to figure things out and needed help figuring it out. So it was coming into the outreach channel.</p>



<p>So as for the enhancement, there&#8217;s enhancements on the components, quite a few, but I wanted to just point out the tabs component is getting quite some attention now because it&#8217;s one of the components that you could add to, that is needed for the data views or for the admin as well as for content creators. So they&#8217;re building that component so you can add into your custom blocks if there&#8217;s a need for that.</p>



<p>And it also is used actually in the sidebar when you have the settings and the styles tabs in the sidebar from a block that&#8217;s also using the tabs component and there are quite a few changes there. So check them out.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> And for the design tools, I think border blocks support got added to quite a few blocks. The term description block, the media text block, gallery block, border block support, the social links, paragraph quote and heading got border support or is it inherited from outer blocks? I&#8217;m not a hundred percent sure, maybe you can help me out there, Birgit.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s inherited. It&#8217;s block intern.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: Just edit directly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Directly. So if you put a paragraph in your canvas, you get in the style section, you get the border controls like radius and color and thickness and style and there was for WordPress 6.6, I published a post with the roster of which design tools are available for which block because there are quite a few holes.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I&#8217;m surprised that it isn&#8217;t. I thought that heading and things had the border control already. It&#8217;s such a useful little support that can be almost on every call block, I feel.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haac</em>k: Right. But it needs to have a few iterations before it gets rolled out to all the blocks to make sure that it&#8217;s actually feasible and workable. And until then, it was only on the group block and on the pull quote and on the columns I think and images. So there were quite a few that had it and now they&#8217;re actually going through the list on Adam and whichever block can actually be using it.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> So there are quite a few that it gets added to, which I think is useful. I remember when I built my own blocks, I always used to try to add it to the blocks because they&#8217;re just a useful little snippet and can be used in creative ways and be helpful at some point.</p>



<p>I think sometimes I use just the bottom border to create a line below something or above something. So yeah, you can be quite creative with to use. I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s supposed to be used that way, maybe I&#8217;m getting people into wrong&#8230; Giving them wrong ideas.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, the tools are there to just have a border on the bottom of things or yeah, I sometimes used it not with the block editor, but when I was building sites and doing some CSS there, I was only just using the right side at the bottom to mimic a drop shadow without having to use the drop shadow and it&#8217;s all there.</p>



<p>You can have a radius there, you can have a border color changes thickness also the different types. So they&#8217;re solid, their started line and all that. That&#8217;s all available now to all those blocks. And one of them is actually also the buttons block.</p>



<p>So you can have border now, you always could have a border around the single button but not around the whole button set if you have two or three or more buttons in a row. So that is really cool too. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> What else do we have in here? I think an update on data views, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well there&#8217;s more support coming on. So the latest comment got color support and then the buttons got padding border and color and the image got margin support that I was surprised that it didn&#8217;t have it, but it obviously didn&#8217;t have it before. And then the code book also got spacing support. So I have to rebuild the blog post that I did on the make blog about the roster and which design tools are supported by which block for the next version definitely as well.</p>



<p>So data views, there is now a reordering of the columns possible, so when you see your pages in a list, you can change the order of the columns and possibly also switch it off. It also now has support for the filters, you can combine fields to filter things. And it also now gives you an updated front page badge in your pages where the page that is the front page is going to be identified differently. So with a nice icon, so that&#8217;s the data views. Data views are just the admin pages for themes, for templates, pages and patterns in the site editor.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, I really love that update. I think it just brings this modern feel into WordPress. I think we have been looking at the tables for too long.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Right, right. And I&#8217;m glad that they&#8217;re doing it for the site editor separately from the WP admin just so it works out nicely, but it actually is another point of friction for new users where they see the, it&#8217;s not a consistent admin thing, it of gives a little bit of a confusion what is in which place, where do I go from things.</p>



<p>We know that from WordPress.com and they had Calypso, but that&#8217;s a temporary thing, of course. And I know that some of the contributors already working on getting the list of posts into the data and the new data views, but it needs to be done very carefully because there are quite a few extensibility features beforehand and the backwards compatibility with plugins and all, because for 10 years pretty much, plugins were the ones who actually fixed some of the old UI in WordPress and every plugin did it a different way.</p>



<p>So we need to make sure that all the contributors all want to make sure that all this backwards compatibility is not going to blow up some pages there.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Very exciting work, I feel. So another update has been to the locking of blocks, I think UI update. So they tweaked the&#8230; I think just edit some spacing and change the button size of the block logging modal. So I think it just has a little bit more spacing and is easier to read and update. That was also in the latest release.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes. Sometimes these little tweaks actually help a lot, contributing to the consistency and to take out the mystery and make the user brain feel comfortable where they are and not get confused just because.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, definitely so much. Small changes can make a big difference. It&#8217;s really amazing too to see that. And I feel like think mainly it&#8217;s the spacing added and the button size. It does look a little bit cleaner and better to understand for our brains. So I think that&#8217;s a good thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And then there&#8217;s one new API that, well it&#8217;s not new, but the block bindings API received some unification from get value and get values on the functions there that you have get value, set value, set values and get values, that&#8217;s certainly for developers.</p>



<p>Interesting to make sure that your block binding still work with this and have some additional, there&#8217;s no additional features in there. I think just that it&#8217;s a developer experience enhancement, so it makes it a little bit easier to work with the block binding.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> All right. So I think then we move on to experiments or did I skip something? I&#8217;m just wondering.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, I don&#8217;t think so.</p>



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



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> There&#8217;s a long list of&#8230; So yeah, in the experiments I think it&#8217;s all about the grid. Am I right? And you maybe, Birgit, need to help me out a little bit here getting the listeners up to date because I haven&#8217;t had the chance to properly test it myself. I will do that definitely. But I think it&#8217;s just fine-tuning and some things have been disabled. So maybe help me out, Birgit.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, I do. So it&#8217;s just one of the experiments that is there is the interactive grid layout and there have been quite a few changes there or updates that we want to point out. One is the block movers, the handles have changed and it&#8217;s probably easier to move now blocks from one grid cell to the other, which you probably want to do anyway.</p>



<p>And then also adding a block to the grid block was, I tested it and it confused me a bit and I was not alone was that I would have hoped that the plus sign for the inserter would be in the grid cell, but it was on the outside of the grid block and it wouldn&#8217;t help. It was tricky to get a new block into a full grid block. So that has changed. You definitely need to switch on the experiments though to figure that out.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> So it&#8217;s just if you have, I think under Gutenberg experiments, and I think this is grid interactivity is the name that you have to switch on, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the other part is that there&#8217;s a visualizer popover and they also confuse people how to use it and they hide it now under the canvas, so it&#8217;s hidden away. So for the manual grids, they disable some of the inserter in between inserters and they also don&#8217;t display the default appender for the manual grid, but it&#8217;s really a work in progress and it definitely needs some more testing.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> It is, and it&#8217;s quite complicated to make it very user-friendly, but a great tool to have. So that&#8217;s really exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, it is. Absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Working with grids, finally. I remember that was one of the first more complex blocks that I will build was I want to have grid layout and actually some of the things that are now in core look quite similar to what I have done, which is cool to see that it&#8217;s very different, of course, easier to use in complex, but the core with rows and how you can snap them into multiple columns, it&#8217;s quite similar, which is cool. And you guys come into core, I&#8217;m so happy about it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, I like the core span and rose span for each cell that you can move it around. It&#8217;s really interesting. You can get some nice layouts that are called bento layouts, like the bento boxes from Japanese cuisines. You can build your own website as a bento box. That&#8217;s really cool. Or if you so prefer, you can actually build a Pied Mondrian design with just squares and rectangles, which I like.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, grid changes the layout options so much. I love it. It&#8217;s incredible. It&#8217;s crazy that we didn&#8217;t have it for such a long time and we had to just stack everything below each other in a long, one column thing. It&#8217;s so much more creative and I think it gives just a lot of flexibility to layout building for users. So it&#8217;s really exciting to have that as a block.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Definitely. It was in WordPress core since 6.2 for CSS or for theme builders, for developers, but there wasn&#8217;t any interface for that. And I&#8217;m really happy that we now have an interface, but that is also where the complication comes in because some of the concepts are really hard for somebody who doesn&#8217;t have any knowledge about how grid layout is supposed to work, it&#8217;s really hard to convey the concepts with the interface.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;m glad they&#8217;re taking it slow, but I&#8217;m also glad that they&#8217;re taking it one step at a time and get people into how to use that. They&#8217;re quite great theme developers that show people what they can do with it and I mentioned before, Damon Cook&#8217;s article for the developer blog has some nice instructions on how to create a card layout with the grid block and with the stack block and combining all those great tools. It&#8217;s really interesting what can happen there. All right.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, it changes a lot. I also like that we work slowly on it because it&#8217;s really complex and like you said, could confuse users because it&#8217;s quite hard to understand.</p>



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



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So there were quite a few updates to the documentation and I almost like to call them out because one of the big hurdles for developers getting into block development and block themes is the leaky documentation that not everything is documented well enough.</p>



<p>And so the contributors updated the documentation for the interactivity API on how to install and import the interactivity API to a block. And then also the alpine versus preact extra explanations. Those are libraries on which the interactivity API is based on.</p>



<p>So having some of that explanation in the documentation probably dissolved some of the mystery as well. And then the GetContext function received an update on the usage examples in conjunction with the namespace argument. And then there were a few other updates as well. All right. What else is in there? Was that it? That was it for the Gutenberg.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I think that was it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Gutenberg 18.9 of course there were, I think we talked about maybe 45 of the 245 PRs that landed in there. Definitely consult the Changelog from the release post that that came out. And I will share in the show notes when this podcast is published.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development and Discusssed<strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>So we come to the section what&#8217;s in active development or discussed, and I wanted to point out all the plugin developers around you or around me here amongst the listeners to a PR that&#8217;s 61577 on the Gutenberg report that is the first iteration on a plugin template registration API for plugins. It has been really hard for plugins to, say you offer a custom post type for books or recipes or something like that, how can add a template for the block that goes into the site editor.</p>



<p>That was a big hurdle there. With a new PR, there will be new functions and new class. So there will be a WP_register_template function and there will be a WP_block_templates registry class. And they&#8217;re all based on register block type, but they actually go into the template.</p>



<p>And when you follow the PR, you also see some code examples that you can use first for testing and also for learning about this API and how it&#8217;s going to work. Right now it&#8217;s not yet merged, but it&#8217;s getting ready to be merged and I hope it&#8217;s going to be in 19.0, latest 19.1. But if you want to test it yourself, you need to get through some hoops there. You would need to fork Gutenberg, then check out the branch for the PR run NPM install. So we get all the NPM updates right there.</p>



<p>And then you can follow those testing instructions if you add the plug in to a local or a local WP site install. So you can link that. But yeah, it&#8217;s definitely for developers, your content creators and no code site builders, need to shut your ears a bit. It&#8217;s going to be a little technical there, but I just wanted to point that out because it would be really helpful to have early tests in there.</p>



<p>You can also wait until it&#8217;s merged and then grab either the release or grab the Gutenberg Nightly to test it and use those examples that are in the PR for your testing. I&#8217;m sure there will be an announcement for call for testing in the outreach channel and probably on the make blog as well.</p>



<p>But this is the first time you hear about it. And then I&#8217;m wondering when the next time of the Gutenberg Changelog will be. And Ellen, you&#8217;re probably happy to know that the developer who contributes to Core is actually coming from WooCommerce who had some trouble implementing block templates for a plugin or major plugin.</p>



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



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s really cool to see now that I see a lot of the behind the scenes things happening that&#8217;s really an effort to contribute work across all these multiple instances at Automatic. I really love to see that and I think there&#8217;s an effort to do more of it.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s really exciting to see that WooCommerce could contribute something to Core and I would also hope that with the block themes that we&#8230; Or the adoption of block themes to push that I will be able to do that to contribute to core with things we feel needed as in WooCommerce. I think there&#8217;s a lot to do there, which is exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, you plan, you are the trailblazer there for adoption of block themes on the extension sites. So that&#8217;s really cool.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: Yeah. Interesting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, we&#8217;re coming to the end of our show. This was a little shorter than usual. Don&#8217;t fear. We&#8217;ll come back end of August.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: With more.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> With more and covering two plugin releases, 19.0, 19.1. We will record a show in the last week of August because I will go on vacation and it&#8217;s a two-week vacation. And then with this week and the next week, jumbling, it&#8217;s going to be a four-week hiatus for the podcast as well as for the weekend edition.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer: </em>Well-deserved rest.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer: </em>It&#8217;s quite active. It sounds like an active holiday, so maybe not rest, but just a change of scenery is always good to have.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, it&#8217;s a change of scenery, but we don&#8217;t have a whole lot of daily activities. We are going to British Columbia and it&#8217;s all about landscape, it&#8217;s about water, it&#8217;s about boating, and it&#8217;s about just sitting there.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Outdoors.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, outdoors and do some hikes. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: Beautiful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Indeed. So Ellen, thank you so much for joining us again here.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Thank you for having me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, if people want to connect with you.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer</em>: I remember the last one I did was also a two version of it. I was like, oh my goodness, this is a lot. So I hope I did a little better this time. I hope you want to have me back at some point.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You can&#8217;t do badly. I know you Ellen, you&#8217;re one of the well-prepared co-hosts here on the show, so don&#8217;t you worry about you.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> We&#8217;ll see if you invite me back at some point.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I can put it on a calendar, but I don&#8217;t want to scare you.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> No, I&#8217;d love to, actually. It&#8217;s really helpful for me to stay up to date with things. I love that. Really good for me too.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right, so if people want to connect with you and in your new role, where would they reach you? Are you on the WooCommerce Slack or?</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I&#8217;m on the WooCommerce community Slack. I am on the WordPress Slack and on Twitter, quite active. Instagram, YouTube, you can find me anywhere if you Google Ellen Bauer. So yeah, I&#8217;m around and I love to connect. I think one of the things I really feel is important and that I can contribute to help WooCommerce too, is that I really want to be available to everyone building block themes for e-commerce.</p>



<p>And really one of the third things is that I want to collect the feedback and the pain points. And I know because I&#8217;ve built a WooCommerce block theme myself that there are a lot of pain points still. There&#8217;s a lot of improvements have made and it&#8217;s just very complicated work. So we have to be patient and we have to just speak up and engage and just work together on it.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a really big, big topic to make this work. So I&#8217;m around. And one of the things I&#8217;m also planning, I haven&#8217;t announced it yet, but I will within the next one or two weeks, is that I also plan, because I am so inspired by Anne&#8217;s work doing the hallway hangouts and was so good for me to have this little community to voice the issues just in a casual way.</p>



<p>So I want to create a little community hangout, Zoom hangout around WooBlock themes. So I think that will be good to get out there and then people can join in and I will have different topics and just have it very casually. So I will announce that very soon just everywhere I can so people can get aware of it. So here I am saying it to you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You heard it here first, dear listeners.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Actually, it&#8217;s the first time because I&#8217;m still getting on board and there&#8217;s lots to do. But I think that is important to get established early, like a monthly little hangout to be available because that&#8217;s one of the main goals I have is just to be available for people who try to build with WooCommerce and just really, really important to hear everyone out and just be available.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That&#8217;s terrific.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> So just ping me with any questions you have.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s terrific. I&#8217;m glad that you&#8217;re picking up on that. There&#8217;s also a roadmap rollout post from Beau Levens, I think, where WooCommerce is going.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer: </em>That&#8217;s very exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And I will also share the link to the WooCommerce community Slack in the show notes. And well, if you&#8217;re announcing this out and the next weekend edition comes out, it&#8217;s going to be in there. But that will come out at the end of August as well.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> And I think the WooCommerce developer blog really is way more exciting now. They do great work there too.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Yeah. The developer relations, Stephanie Pai. Natalie, I think is her name.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer: </em>Jacqueline.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, Jacqueline. Yeah. Why do I think Natalie? There must be somebody&#8230; Jacqueline, yeah. They really connected with the community through&#8230; I saw it at WordCamp Europe when they connected with the community and talked with a few plugin developers and also in WordCamp, Asia. All right, before we end…</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Wrap it up.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Wrap it up.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Not yet. I want to get you on vacation.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: As always, the show notes will be published on GutenbergTimes.com/podcast and this is number 105. And 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>, that&#8217;s <a href="mailto:Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com">Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com</a>, or just ping me on the WP Slack or on Twitter DM me wherever you find me. That&#8217;s it. Thanks for listening. Goodbye from me and thanks again to Ellen Bauer, and you have a wonderful summer everybody.</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> Thank you. Bye. Thanks for listening, everyone.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 04 Aug 2024 06:28:37 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:138:"Gutenberg Times: Learn WordPress redesign, WooCommerce: the future is block-based, starter themes and a lot more   — Weekend Edition 301";s: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=29455";s: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:140:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/learn-wordpress-redesign-woocommerce-the-future-is-block-based-starter-themes-and-a-lot-more-weekend-edition-301/";s: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:29782:"<p>Hi there, </p>



<p>Summer! We are now for the second year in Europe, and we are starting to appreciate the four seasons again. Florida only has two seasons, dry and wet.  We are also getting ready for our Summer vacation. For most of the time we will be unplugged from the Internet and the computers. </p>



<p>The Weekend Edition resumes at the end of August! This edition should provide you with plenty of updates to until then. And for developers, be on the look-out for the monthly round up post on the WordPress Developer Blog: What&#8217;s new for Developers (August 2024) to come out August 10, 2024. </p>



<p>Be well, maybe you can take a vacation, too. </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>





<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-301/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-301/#upcoming-events">Upcoming events</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-301/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-301/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-301/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ol>
</div></div>



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



<p>Reminder: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/09/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-whats-next-in-gutenberg-2/"><strong>Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about what’s next in Gutenberg (August 2024)</strong></a> on <strong>August 15, 2024, at 15:00 UTC</strong>. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> wrote:  “This hallway hangout seeks to be another snapshot of what’s being worked on in the Gutenberg plugin to provide broader awareness to more WordPress contributors and get feedback. The hope is to come together early to talk about different features, flush out concerns sooner, help more folks get involved, and find ways to work better together. “</p>



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<p>At the WordPress Meetup in London, <strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> gave a lightning talk <strong><a href="https://www.wpldn.uk/2024/08/exploring-wordpress-6-6-key-developer-features-unveiled-by-juanma-garrido/">Exploring WordPress 6.6: Key Developer Features Unveiled</a></strong>  and covered style variations, color, and typography presets, block pattern overrides, updated Theme.json, and unified SlotFill components. <strong>Dan Maby </strong>summarized it and wrote: &#8220;JuanMa’s session covers essential updates that make design implementation easier and more flexible. Let’s explore these exciting new features!&#8221;</p>



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<p><strong>Rich Tabor</strong> also published a <a href="https://rich.blog/wordpress-6-6/"><strong>WordPress 6.6</strong> </a> post with short videos about each major features. It is so much easier to grasp the nature and the usefulness of an update or a new feature when you can see it in action. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Learn.WordPress redesign now live! </h3>



<p>And if you find yourself wondering what you do without a weekend edition for the three weeks, go, and browse the <strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org">freshly released Learn.WordPress website</a>.</strong> It has some great courses for end users, on block development and theme building. The latest course is the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-theme-developer/"><strong>Intermediate Theme Developer</strong></a> course, with 32 lessons.</p>



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<p>In her blog post <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2024/08/02/meet-the-new-learn-wordpress/">Meet the new Learn WordPress</a>,</strong> <strong>Kathrin Presner</strong> shared the details of the why and how of the efforts to get this redesign over the finish line. It&#8217;s also a great historical record of the before and after state of the site&#8217;s designs. </p>



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<p>In the the WordPress News article <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/08/a-brand-new-way-to-learn-wordpress/"><strong>A Brand-New Way to Learn WordPress</strong></a>, <strong>Lauren Stein</strong> included a short video and put the renewed training site into the overall context of the ongoing efforts for a finished redesign of the WordPress.org website. You&#8217;ll find links to all learning pathways courses, and the announcements of <strong>Walking Tours on August 6th at 14:00 UTC</strong> and <strong>August 8th, 2024 at 21:00 UTC</strong> with the educators Wes Theron and Jonathan Bossenger.</p>



<img width="652" height="441" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/learn-homepage-1536x1038-1.png?resize=652%2C441&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29588" />



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<p><strong>Wes Theron</strong>, interactive designer at Automattic, published his tutorial <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/exploring-wordpress-6-6/"><strong>Exploring WordPress 6.6</strong></a>, walking the viewers to a &#8220;range of new features and enhancements designed to improve your website management experience. Discover the latest updates and see how they can benefit your site.&#8221;</p>



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<p><strong>Jonathan Bossenger,</strong> developer educator on the WordPress training team, published a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2024/07/30/call-for-contributors-intermediate-plugin-developer-learning-pathway/">Call for contributors: Intermediate Plugin Developer learning pathway</a>. Can you help with scriptwriting, voice recording, video editing, content creation and reviewing? There is lots to be done, and you can have a major impact on the project with your contribution. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 18.9</h3>



<p><strong>Hector Prieto</strong> released Gutenberg 18.9 and highlighted in the release post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-9-31-july/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 18.9? (31 July)</strong></a></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/#data-views-get-more-flexible">Data Views get more flexible</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/#consolidating-design-tools-across-blocks">Consolidating design tools across blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/#improved-usability-in-editing-and-applying-font-size-presets">Improved usability in editing and applying font size presets</a></li>
</ul>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-9-31-july/"><img width="652" height="376" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-3-1024x590-1.png?resize=652%2C376&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29572" /></a>



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<p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-d93781e1cc752a3c931d2fecfcf49569">?️ Latest episode: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-104-block-themes-gutenberg-18-8/">Gutenberg Changelog #104 – Block Themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6</a> with special guest Carolina Nymark</p>



<p>For the latest <strong>Gutenberg Changelog episode (105)</strong>, I caught up with my friend, <strong>Ellen Bauer</strong>, now WooCommerce, former Elma Studio. We had a great chat about block themes, Gutenberg 18.9 and block design tools . The episode will drop into your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>



<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/"><img width="652" height="206" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Screenshot-2024-08-01-at-14.43.15.png?resize=652%2C206&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29575" /></a>



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<p><strong>Apropos Podcast: </strong>The photo of the week for me was <strong>Laura Adamonis </strong><a href="https://x.com/LauraAdamonis/status/1816624770399506920">tweet </a>&#8220;@gutenbergtimes with @bph and @inyongski and meal prep go together on a rainy day. Great show. Pulled pork, yogurt, and carrots. &#8221; Huge thank you to Laura Adamonis for sharing her enthusiasm.</p>



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Developer Hours</h3>



<p><strong>August 13 at 15:00 UTC</strong> <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302520686/"><strong>Developer Hours: Hello, Blocks! – An Introduction to Block Development</strong></a> with JuanMa Garrido and Ryan Welcher</p>



<p><strong>August 27 at 15:00 UTC</strong> <strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302512124/">Developer Hours: Building WordPress themes with the Create Block Theme plugin</a> </strong>with Tammie Lister and yours truly</p>



<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302512124/"><img width="600" height="338" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/600_522612993.webp?resize=600%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29523" /></a>



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



<p>This week, I rediscovered the plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/enhanced-embed-block/"><strong>Enhanced Embed Block for YouTube</strong></a> developed by <strong>Mark Root-Wiley</strong> and <strong>Cory Birdsong.</strong> It lets you add more limits to the embed block, for instance <code>rel=0</code> to just allow only videos from your channel in the suggestions. Another feature is that it can be set to load videos from nocookie.YouTube.com for enhanced privacy. They also emphasized that there is no plugin lock-in. Should you remove the plugin, it uses the core/embed block as a fallback.</p>



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<p>With his post, <a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-full-site-editing/"><strong>Mastering WordPress full site editing: a step-by-step tutorial</strong></a>, <strong>Jeremy Holcombe</strong> walks you through the various aspects of the site editor and aims to show you how FSE works and let you develop your own site designs, just like the pros. </p>



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<p>This week, <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/0-aHhfbk8Ac"><strong>unlocked the power of Ollie Pro with Mike McAlister</strong></a> on his Livestream on YouTube. In this interactive session, you &#8220;discover why I love the Ollie Theme and learn all about Ollie Pro&#8221; Marsland wrote. </p>



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<p>As part of the new learning pathways, <strong>Cynthia Norman</strong>, WordPress theme developer from Ontario and member of the WordPress training team,  published the video: <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/26/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/"><strong>Converting a classic theme to a block&nbsp;theme</strong></a> on WordPressTV. &#8220;With this lesson, you will: describe the various requirements of converting a classic theme, differentiate between a hybrid theme and a block theme and list the steps to take to convert a classic theme into a block theme.&#8221; She wrote. </p>



<p>The video is also part of the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-theme-developer/">Intermediate Theme Developer</a> course. </p>



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<p><a href="https://x.com/mahdiali_"><strong>Mahdi Ali Khanusiya</strong></a>, Ilmosys, shared <a href="https://x.com/mahdiali_/status/1816064166630969570">on X (former Twitter) </a>about the &#8220;refreshed design of the <a href="https://thepatternswp.com/">PatternsWP</a> website! Built entirely with the WordPress block editor.&#8221; <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/patternswp/">PatternWP </a> is a WordPress plugin with a huge library of patterns and full-page layouts. It helps designers and content creators to streamline their page building processes.</p>



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<p><a href="https://x.com/anja"><strong>Anja Merret</strong></a> reported that <strong>MaxiBlocks</strong> introduced a free theme to work with the block editor or page builder. Together with the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/maxi-blocks/">free block editor plugin</a> and the new free theme (in Beta), Maxi Blocks aims to offer an entire web design tool kit. It offers many patterns and icons to use on your site. Join the <a href="https://maxiblocks.com/free-maxiblocks-wordpress-theme/">Beta team here</a> or wait for the theme to be available in the WordPress repository.</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>This week, I teamed up with Vikas Singhal, InstaWP to hold a webinar: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/yc_cBtjDJxc"><strong>WordPress Block Editor for Theme Developers and Designers</strong></a>. The recording is available on YouTube. The shared list of resources is <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DJeHMlN4onIjNtf8C26SZz-NS1XcwJHuW_qkDjnXF88/edit#heading=h.ocbv6ztbssri">available on Google Doc. </a></p>




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<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> also posted on the Developer Blog: <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/22/mixing-and-matching-styles-colors-and-typography-in-wordpress-6-6/"><strong>Mixing and matching styles, colors, and typography in WordPress 6.6</strong></a> &#8211; and teaches us how to create custom color and typography-only global style variations in WordPress 6.6.</p>



<img width="652" height="338" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tt4-color-and-type-variations-1536x796-1.webp?resize=652%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29562" />



<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong></p>



<p><strong>Bernhard Kau</strong> continued his series on building block theme for his website with <a href="https://kau-boys.com/3682/wordpress/goal-missed-i-had-to-add-some-css-to-the-theme"><strong>Goal missed: I had to add some CSS to the theme</strong></a>. Although determined to only use the Site editor to create his theme, the difficulties to designing the header for his site, made Kau reach into his rich CSS tool box. He continues explaining how he added CSS files to his themes. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Starter Themes</h2>



<p><strong>Brian Gardner</strong> just uploaded <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/powder-zero/"><strong>Powder Zero</strong></a> to the WordPress repository. It&#8217;s a A starter block theme for designers and developers. It offers plain designs and patterns for all the important templates with header and footer template parts. It also offers code examples to create block styles via the functions.php. It&#8217;s give you a solid head start into block theme building. </p>



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<p>A few months back, <strong>Brian Coords</strong> and <strong>Aurooba Ahmad</strong> published a <strong>&#8220;Block Theme<a href="https://github.com/bacoords/block-theme"> is a block-based starter theme built for modern WordPress developers.</a></strong> Now it has reached 73 stars on GitHub. It corporates a build process, works with SASS, and also includes a few custom blocks. It also includes Linting, Prettier, and WordPress Coding Standards. </p>



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<p>About a year ago, <strong>Bill Erickson</strong> published <a href="https://www.billerickson.net/hybrid-wordpress-theme-starter/"><strong>A starter theme for building Hybrid WordPress Themes</strong></a>. &#8220;A <strong>hybrid WordPress theme</strong> uses theme.json to define styles and customize the block editor while also using traditional PHP template files.&#8221; he explained.</p>



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<p>With <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/block-theme-generator/"><strong>Theme Builder Tool</strong></a>, you can assemble a new starter theme yourself on four levels: </p>



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<li>&nbsp;<strong>No Code</strong>&nbsp;-For building your theme in the Site Editor.</li>



<li>&nbsp;<strong>Basic</strong>&nbsp;-More opinionated than&nbsp;<em>Underscores (_s)</em>.</li>



<li>&nbsp;<strong>Advanced</strong>&nbsp;with WooCommerce support and basic build tools.</li>



<li>&nbsp;<strong>Advanced</strong>&nbsp;with WooCommerce support and without build tools.</li>
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<p>When talking to site builders and developers, it turns out, many use  the default theme <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentyfour/"><strong>Twenty-Twenty-Four</strong></a> as a versatile starter theme to start new projects, either with a child theme or as a clone. </p>



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<p>And finally, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/"><strong>Create block Theme plugin</strong></a> allows you to create a child theme, or a clone of the current block theme active on your site. It also provides you with a skeleton block theme to start with a blank slate </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>Beau Lebens,</strong> Head of Engineering for WooCommerce published <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/07/23/woocommerce-in-2024-and-beyond-roadmap-update/"><strong>WooCommerce in 2024 and beyond: Roadmap update</strong></a> and laid out the plan for the next few months for WooCommerce development and focus as well as an outlook beyond. Besides new and revamp initiatives around the Developer Experience for partners and extenders, like a newsletter, enhancing the REST-API, the message seems clear: &#8220;Our future is block-based &#8220;. He continues: &#8220;If your solutions are still relying on shortcodes or other legacy APIs, it’s time to embrace blocks and modernize your approach.&#8221;</p>



<a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/07/23/woocommerce-in-2024-and-beyond-roadmap-update/"><img width="652" height="366" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image_801c33.webp?resize=652%2C366&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29608" /></a>



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<p><br />In <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/07/26/woocommerce-9-2-pre-release-updates/"><strong>WooCommerce 9.2: Pre-release updates</strong></a>, <a href="https://x.com/jacklynbiggin"><strong>Jacklyn Biggin</strong></a>, developer advocate at WooCommerce gave a preview of the upcoming release. Among other updates, it  will bring a &#8220;Customize your Store&#8221; feature, enhances filtering for store searches  and accessibility improvements. </p>



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<p><strong>Damon Cook</strong> published on the Developer Blog: <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/30/building-a-card-layout-with-a-hover-reveal-effect/"><strong>Building a card layout with a “hover reveal” effect</strong></a>. It’s a short tutorial on how to add block style to a core block and add CSS for animation. It’s even interesting for content creators as they learn how to create a Grid Block with card style cover block.&nbsp;</p>



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<p>Using Generate Blocks Pro, the Create Block Theme plugin and a child theme of Twenty-Twenty-Four, <a href="https://x.com/neverything"><strong>Silvan Hagen</strong></a>, a developer from Switzerland,  shared how to build a <a href="https://silvanhagen.com/writing/wordpress-mega-menu-blocks/"><strong>WordPress Mega Menu with Blocks</strong></a> recreating a project for the Kofi Annan Foundation. </p>



<p>You can read-up on another approach to building Mega Menus on the WordPress Developer blog, where <strong>Nick Diego</strong> posted <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/02/29/an-introduction-to-block-based-mega-menus/"><strong>An introduction to block-based mega menus</strong></a>, applying the newly released WordPress APIs from version 6.5 </p>



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<p>In this week&#8217;s Livestream, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> was seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/LXWxfSQ-ygA"><strong>building a Schema.org block integration</strong></a> in context of a Job board site. In this longer than usual stream he covers a myriad of block development topics including debugging via the consol e.log and exploring functions, attributes and InnerBlocks. </p>


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<p><strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> and <strong>Nick Diego</strong> explored in the latest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6-yg-GKTZg"><strong>Developer Hours alternatives to creating a custom block</strong></a>. They walk through several scenarios often addressed with custom blocks and discussed alternative approaches, especially those that leverage block patterns and Editor extensions.</p>



<p>Key highlights included: &#8211;</p>



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<li> How to add new functionality to core blocks </li>



<li>How to use content-only editing and the allowedBlocks attribute in patterns </li>



<li>How to integrate block bindings and block variations </li>



<li>How to effectively use block locking and naming &#8211; How to create overrides in synced patterns</li>
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<p>They shared <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1myYoEehSPS6rhFMzpEq4h_v3z5Z4TTA_C1rJDG0Mk0U/edit#heading=h.jnrvxfmnum5f">their notes and resources in this Google Doc</a></p>


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<p><a href="https://x.com/rudrastyh"></a></p>



<p>The Interactivity API seems interesting to you, but you&#8217;re not sure that you have time to figure everything out? In his blog post, <a href="https://rudrastyh.com/gutenberg/interactivity-api.html"><strong>Interactivity API Explained</strong></a>,  <a href="https://x.com/rudrastyh"><strong>Misha Rudrastyh</strong></a> provides step-by-step instructions and explains the various pieces on the way. </p>



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<p><strong>Antonio Sejas</strong>, Developer at WordPress.com share how their team <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/07/31/wordpress-components-tailwind-css/"><strong>uses WordPress Components and Tailwind CSS in their Local Development App</strong></a>. It&#8217;s the first post in the new <em>Building Studio in Public</em> series. In this article, &#8220;we explore how we decided to use Tailwind CSS and the WordPress components that make up Studio and why that decision gave us extra flexibility for the future of Studio.&#8221; Sejas wrote</p>



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<p><strong>Nick Diego</strong> posted <a href="https://nickdiego.com/useful-resources-for-curating-the-wordpress-editing-experience/"><strong>Useful resources for curating the WordPress editing experience</strong></a> after fielding a few questions from developers at WordCamp Canada. You&#8217;ll find links to repos with code examples, to documentation pages, and articles published on the WordPress Developer blog. He covers server-side, client site and theme.json methods and approaches. </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. </p>



<p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



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



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



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



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<p>Featured Image: Screenshot of the newly designed Learn.WordPress.org site. </p>



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


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


<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 03 Aug 2024 10:30:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:55:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Netherlands 2024 rescheduled";s: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=7325880";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/08/wordcamp-netherlands-2024-rescheduled/";s: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:1351:"<p>WordCamp Netherlands 2024 has been rescheduled from its initial dates of September 27 and 28, 2024, to the new dates of November 29 and 30, 2024.</p>



<p>In early February, a new organizing team began preparations for WordCamp Netherlands 2024. Despite some setbacks, the team has continued with enthusiasm and optimism. Most of the delays have been overcome, and nearly everything is in place to make this edition a success. However, one crucial aspect beyond our control has become a major obstacle: attendee registration.</p>



<p>Additional time is needed to allow more people the opportunity to register for the event. After consulting with WordCamp Central, it was decided to move this edition to November 29 and 30, 2024. This extra time will ensure an even better and more inspiring event in November.</p>



<p>Attendees who have already purchased tickets can request a refund. <br /><a href="https://netherlands.wordcamp.org/2024/wordcamp-netherlands-rescheduled/">For assistance, please contact the organizing team. <br /></a>Refunds are available until September 30.</p>



<p><a href="https://netherlands.wordcamp.org/2024/tickets/">Tickets for the new dates in November are now available for purchase.</a></p>



<p>We look forward to welcoming all attendees in November.</p>



<p>The WordCamp Netherlands 2024 Organizing Team</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:41:01 +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:20:"Richard van Denderen";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:54:"WordPress.org blog: A Brand-New Way to Learn 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:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17545";s: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://wordpress.org/news/2024/08/a-brand-new-way-to-learn-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:11014:"<p><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress</a> has been growing as a hub of educational resources for WordPress since 2020. Now, it’s undergone a transformation in content focus and design with the introduction of Learning Pathways and a reimagined look.</p>



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

</div>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The WordPress.org redesign continues </h3>



<p>Learn WordPress is the latest section of WordPress.org to receive a design refresh, following other sections like the <a href="https://wordpress.org/showcase/">Showcase</a> and <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/">Developer Resources</a>. It brings a unified look and feel that’s modern, visual, and inviting.</p>



<img width="1024" height="919" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/07/2-learn-1.png?resize=1024%2C919&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-17613" />



<p>Beyond its fresh aesthetic, the new Learn WordPress site prioritizes learners with a revamped user experience consistent with familiar modern learning platforms. It features a new navigation menu, eye-catching thumbnails, and search filters so you can explore and discover content quickly. The clearer and more structured layout helps you easily recognize the resources you need (courses, lessons, Online Workshops) based on your learning preferences. &nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Introducing Learning Pathways</h3>



<p>This redesign also highlights a new approach to Learn WordPress content, emphasizing what learners engage with the most. The introduction of Learning Pathways lets you grow your WordPress skills progressively. You can start with beginner essentials and then work your way through more advanced concepts at your own speed. This method lets you build a solid understanding as you move through each course. Learning Pathways are geared toward specific learners, like people using WordPress for the first time or those interested in development.</p>



<img width="1024" height="730" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/07/1-learn.png?resize=1024%2C730&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-17591" />



<p>Four Learning Pathways are already launched and ready to explore:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/">Beginner WordPress User</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-wordpress-user/">Intermediate WordPress User</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/">Beginner WordPress Developer&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-theme-developer/">Intermediate Theme Developer</a></li>
</ul>



<p>You can look forward to more Learning Pathways in the User and Developer tracks soon. Two additional pathways, Designer and Contributor, are also on the roadmap. For more details about Learning Pathways, listen to <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/episode-83-learning-pathways/">episode 83 of the WordPress Briefing</a>. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-off-white-2-background-color has-background"><strong>Get a guided tour of all the exciting Learn WordPress changes</strong> from the Training team’s very own <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/psykro/">Jonathan Bossenger</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/west7/">Wes Theron</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/zoonini/">Kathryn Presner</a>. Sign up for one of their upcoming Online Workshops on <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302434418/"><strong>Tuesday, August 6 at 14:00 UTC</strong> </a>or <strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/302387426/">Thursday, August 8 at 21:00 UTC</a>.</strong></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Education for the future of WordPress</h3>



<p>What started with the Training team’s effort to understand the needs and expectations of current and future learners became a push to create a dynamic learning experience. This next phase of Learn WordPress is an exciting move toward bringing more people into WordPress, whether new users just getting started or established developers looking to add more skills to their toolbox.</p>



<p>If you want to propose a change or report an issue, please do so in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/Learn">Learn GitHub repository</a>. If you love WordPress and want to contribute to making Learn WordPress an even greater resource, join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RW657Q">#training</a> Slack channel. Want to make an immediate impact? Share <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress</a> with someone you know.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Thank you (and props) to all involved</h3>



<p>The new Learn WordPress couldn’t have been possible without the effective collaboration of the Training, Design, Marketing, and Meta teams. </p>



<p class="is-style-wporg-props-medium has-large-font-size"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamwood/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>adamwood</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/agiljulio/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>agiljulio</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/arunshenoy99/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>arunshenoy99</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bsanevans/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>bsanevans</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/burtrw/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>burtrw</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cnormandigital/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>cnormandigital</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/devmuhib/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>devmuhib</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/digitalchild/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>digitalchild</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dufresnesteven/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>dufresnesteven</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ervanyuffrizal/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>ervanyuffrizal</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/faisalahammad/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>faisalahammad</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fcoveram/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>fcoveram</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellosatya/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>hellosatya</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/huzaifaalmesbah/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>huzaifaalmesbah</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/indirabiswas27/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>indirabiswas27</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ironnysh/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>ironnysh</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/itsmhrahman/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>itsmhrahman</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jinalparekh/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>jinalparekh</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>joedolson</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joen/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>joen</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jominney/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>jominney</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/keithnoseworthy/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>keithnoseworthy</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kel-dc/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>kel-dc</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lada7042/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>lada7042</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurahartwigdesign/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>laurahartwigdesign</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurlittle/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>laurlittle</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/markoserb/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>markoserb</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mustakim5/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>mustakim5</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nazmul111/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>nazmul111</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ndiego/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>ndiego</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nilovelez/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>nilovelez</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/noruzzaman/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>noruzzaman</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/orangeambition/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>orangeambition</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/piyopiyofox/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>piyopiyofox</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/psykro/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>psykro</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/renyot/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>renyot</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rfluethi/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>rfluethi</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rjfrizz/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>rjfrizz</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>rmartinezduque</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ryelle/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>ryelle</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sakibsnaz/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>sakibsnaz</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sfougnier/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>sfougnier</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shsajalchowdhury/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>shsajalchowdhury</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sierratr/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>sierratr</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sumitsingh/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>sumitsingh</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/teuila_mau/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>teuila_mau</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webtechpooja/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webtechpooja</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/west7/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>west7</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/zoonini/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>zoonini</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, 02 Aug 2024 13:33:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Lauren Stein";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:110:"Do The Woo Community: Open Source Sustainability, Contributing and Proposal Processes with Courtney and Robert";s: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=84957";s: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://dothewoo.io/os-sustainability-contributing-and-proposal-processes/";s: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:35658:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Courtney:<br />How are you, Robert? How&#8217;s your summer going?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It&#8217;s still summer? I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s been so hot. We were just talking about that in the green room, how the temperature&#8217;s been nuts.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes, yes, yes. Robert and I, being in America, our weather has been very weird. I&#8217;ve been having a lot of Florida weather here in South Central Pennsylvania, which I would like to send back to Florida and now that would be delightful. But the weather in Europe was pretty cool at WordCamp Europe. I liked that temperature better.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Everything is cool when you&#8217;re in Torino.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />This is true. So today we&#8217;re going to get into a little bit of some of the talks that we saw at WordCamp Europe, some of the other open-source connections that were made during this event, and a little bit of pulse on the community as to what we&#8217;ve seen going on in open source. Most recently we&#8217;re just on the heels at the time of this recording of seeing WordPress 6.6.1 ship, which is great. But that said, Robert, how did you spend your WordCamp Europe and what stood out most to you?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Wow, attendance. I mean, I&#8217;m just going to go with that. So WordCamp Europe was talk, talk, talk, work, work, work, network, network, network.<br />We had a booth there for Botguard and had to do some of that. But yeah, it always amazes me how full of people WordCamp Europe is and it was really great to see some of, even I&#8217;ll call &#8217;em micro-communities, get together. I know there was a large contingent from Serbia that was doing their thing, and then you&#8217;d have folks from the Netherlands and Germany and getting that face time that they may not get during the rest of the year. So it&#8217;s always the people and the networking and energy that leaves me smiling for at least six months. Hoarse completely, but definitely smiling.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I saw that there was also a sub-community of the Jonathans getting photos together. Were there any photos of the Roberts? Because I think you and Mr. Dunn here could both be in that photo.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />And Robert Windisch.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yeah, see, I was just hanging out with him in Canada the other week. That&#8217;s right. Yeah, the Roberts need to do a photo. I&#8217;m going to petition for that.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />And we will also include Robbie Adair.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes, yes, absolutely. Include all those that have Rob, Bob or some variation of that related to their names for sure. So WordCamp Europe kicked off with a really amazing talk. We heard first as our opening keynote at WordCamp Europe about the sustainability of open source being the future, and this was something that was shared by both Joost and Juliet who gave a presentation on this. Joost, of course, being the founder of a very well-known SEO plugin company, and Juliet is really well-known in the PHP space, but not a lot of people in WordPress outside of those that pay attention to PHP know Juliet yet. Juliet is an amazing, amazing woman, very talented dev, and somebody that I got to know during Europe quite a lot. And so during that time that she and Joost gave that presentation, they were sharing a great deal about how much of what we use or do on a daily basis depends on open source and how people are often unaware of that implication.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s something that&#8217;s been eye-opening to me, not just from their talk, but also over the last couple of years as I tune into the automotive industry using a lot of open-source technology. Of course, I work for a web host and I know that our servers use a lot of open-source technology to power the hosting environments as well, but there&#8217;s a lot more to open source to learn about that I think we don&#8217;t often see. So they were sharing some of the use cases of that, but they were also really great at helping shed light on. Open source is never free, so you&#8217;ve got either funding to pay people or the time that people give up for their families and their jobs and these other things to make open source possible. So I thought that they really landed that conversation fantastically well, and it&#8217;s something that I believe that the WordPress community especially needs to tune in on. You haven&#8217;t gotten a chance yet, go watch the replay on that one.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Yeah, I think hopefully Bob can drop that into the transcript of the actual link. Yeah, free and open source are always fun words to mess up. And yes, the code may be freely accessible, but how do you put it together? Who&#8217;s put that together? Coming from the Joomla community, which is a hundred percent volunteer where there is no corporate support in any way, shape or form, the burnout is extreme because you just can&#8217;t do that all the time.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yeah, knowing what I do of Juliet, I feel fine in sharing this. Just a few months back, about half a year, maybe a little bit longer ago now, we saw PHPCS, which is the PHP coding standards. Juliet is unarguably the lead dev on this. There are several other contributors to this. That project sat in an abandoned repo and abandoned being that there was a company that created this as an open-source project. The company shuttered and Juliet did not have administrative rights over that area and nobody that did was still contributing. Juliet has been funded through contract work as have others to that area, but it was not at a sustainable level for the amount of contribution needed for that. And I highlight it because WordPress uses WPCS, the WordPress coding standards, and those areas in particular also need to depend upon the PHPCS. So it&#8217;s just a set of rules basically that make sure that how we&#8217;re writing not just our PHP, but I believe it also applies to HTML and CSS, that these things adhere to specific standards so that we have some security reliability in all of the code that we&#8217;re deploying.</p>



<p>If any one of those areas were to fail, that could jeopardize not just WordPress, but also at PHPCS, it would impact many other open-source projects and some that are not, that depend upon PHPCS. And then within WordPress, not only does it impact core, but WPCS that depends on PHPCS also impacts many plugins. Hosts use it as part of securing their environments for managed environments for customers. So there was a lot really dependent on that, and Juliet&#8217;s just been through quite a lot in the past year securing the funding needed, not just for herself, but also the couple of other devs that are working on this. And it&#8217;s one of those backbones of the internet, so I can&#8217;t say enough about the work that she&#8217;s doing. And also, Joost wrote a fantastic piece that helped get at least my executives to participate in funding the work inside of PHPCS as well to make sure that our customers are really well protected. So please do tune in, watch, see what&#8217;s going on. Even if you don&#8217;t really understand code, not the point, it&#8217;s knowing that it&#8217;s securing you here.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Well, it&#8217;s to your point about validating the stuff that WordPress utilizes from plugins to things to Gutenberg to all that. Of course, my favorite is having the tabs versus spaces argument, so that&#8217;s something else as well. But for those who are not technical, just think of tabs versus spaces.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I just got into the conversation at WordCamp Canada about pineapple and pizza. Now you&#8217;re bringing up tabs versus spaces. We&#8217;re going to start a riot with the devs. They&#8217;re all groaning at us right now, Robert. I can hear them. So in addition to that, there were a couple of other really cool things that took place during WordCamp Europe. One of the first things was that right after Joost and Juliet&#8217;s presentation during the Q&amp;A, I asked a question, and then out of that came meeting Matthias from Typo3. Typo3 is one of the organizations that participated in the open source letter to the WordPress European Union related to the Cyber Resiliency Act. What does all that mean? Basically, the European Union has a lot of standards that they&#8217;re trying to implement, and the Cyber Resiliency Act specifies a lot of what they expect out of the software being used in various environments, and some of the wording that is in the Cyber Resiliency Act was not suitable for how open source works. And so out of that came, that&#8217;s exactly it. Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, WordPress and a few others that I think all compiled a letter together to the European Union specifying some of these things and Matthias that we met is part of the community at Typo3. Robert, did you get a chance to meet Matthias?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />We got, of course, everyone got to meet everyone at some point, but we&#8217;re definitely going to push to have, is it Matthias or Mattias? I&#8217;m not always going to look Matthias.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I&#8217;m an American and I butcher European names routinely. I will apologize first, but yes, we should invite him on as a guest and ask him to pronounce his own name for us.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />At least that, I mean, it&#8217;ll be a very quick podcast.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yep, absolutely.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />That&#8217;ll be brilliant. But yeah, I mean not only, it&#8217;s great that he was part of that open letter, but it&#8217;s interesting how, since we&#8217;re on the open talk on open source, how open source gets attacked in different weird ways and the Cyber Resilience Act, which is called CRA before we get all tongue-tied, it just seems strange to make demands of free code and why, yes, there need to be cybersecurity standards, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, last I checked, we can talk about CrowdStrike all day long and they&#8217;re probably CRA compliant, and that doesn&#8217;t really help anyone when Delta is</p>



<p>still down for day five or six of being able to fly. The NHS, I think, had problems. European banks had problems. So some of these rules and regulations really don&#8217;t actually get to the crux of the problem, which is everyone needs to do their homework and stay on top of code no matter what it is and have processes in place.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Absolutely, Robert, I am glad that neither of us were traveling during that in particular.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Oh my goodness, are you kidding? I just got home from WordCamp Canada to which I drove. It was a long drive, but I drove because the distance would not have been any different time-wise if I had flown. But still, I am glad to have gotten through Border Crossing and all of that without having an impact there. Related though to your idea there on testing and kind of coming in on the heels of WordPress 6.6.1 coming out and the calls for testing, I will amplify that people should be testing things and to the point where I have been relentless with my employer about giving me a little sliver of an environment to test on production. So in our managed environments and our enterprise-managed environments, I am ensuring that this gets at least the minimum testing possible. But in addition to that, I would like to call in those that are in the plugin and theme space and make sure that you are testing with the beta releases before we even hit RC. We need to be testing at the beta releases.</p>



<p>So not just a good way to do this in the WordPress space as you go to make WordPress dot org slash test, and usually with every release there is a guideline post saying, here&#8217;s how you could go test the thing, do that, but in addition, do some other testing, both automated and manual with your own plugins and or themes. If you are a dev and or if you&#8217;re managing client sites, the ones that are the most on most of your client sites, I would make sure to also as a user, test those ahead because things will go a little sideways and you might see a maintenance release come in pretty quickly after that. If you are in other parts of open source, the same would still apply. You absolutely should be paying attention to what&#8217;s going on in releases ahead of time and testing and weighing that kind of feedback.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I&#8217;ll just second that, and it all circles back to the sustainability argument or discussion earlier. These things need to be done. Yes.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I will give a quick nod. When I was assembling today&#8217;s show notes, I forgot to include that I was on a panel at Europe about open source, about funding open source from the perspective, this time last year, I spoke with Hari and I was on a panel there from the perspective of I&#8217;m a contributor that wants to get sponsored. What can I do this time? It was from the perspective of empowering organizations such as my employer or Robert&#8217;s employer or a number of others to fund the work of open source. So I will be sure to include those as well. That slipped my mind in today&#8217;s show notes, but there we go. Related to other events and things going on in the open-source space. Robert, you brought up All Things Open. Do you know much about this conference? Have you ever attended?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I have never. And it keeps getting put into time slots where I can&#8217;t make it. It&#8217;s really about open source and everything from GitHub and Copilot to specific projects. Of course, AI, I already mentioned Copilot. That kind of stuff is happening. Speakers have been announced, and I&#8217;m just looking at, so we got Community Leadership Summit and All Things Open on October 27th.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes, that is close to some timelines for my kiddos that I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll be able to go yet or not, but I know a few others in the WordPress community that have attended in the past. You can reach out if you&#8217;re interested to Adam Silver and Nyasha Greene and find out what their experiences have been at this event. But it is really operated like a true open source without an organization besides the conference organizers, this is not an event on behalf of any one open-source project. It is an open-source event of lots of open-source people just getting together, and it&#8217;s one that I think is really, really interesting. It is in, is it North or South Carolina in the Carolinas?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It&#8217;s Raleigh, North Carolina.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Raleigh, North Carolina, yeah. There we go. So if you&#8217;re interested in attending that one, do jump in, check it out, get some tickets. I always love the graphics that organization puts forward. I think it&#8217;d be a good time to also learn and connect with others.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I have been to the Community Leadership Summit in the past, and if you are heavily involved in a project, you should really have this on your radar. I remember having attended, and at the time it was all about codes of conduct and you had folks from all these projects trying to put together codes of conduct, codes of conduct or code of conducts, I dunno where the S goes.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Or the apostrophe.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Or the, oh no, don&#8217;t make it worse. But these are the kinds of things that are addressed to help projects move forward. So definitely take a look at that if you are spending considerable time in any specific project, and that ties right into All Things Open.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that one. There are a couple of other things that have been popping on my radar just in the last week related to open source that are pretty interesting to check out. One of them started. So our show is not just about WordPress, but obviously we&#8217;re heavily steeped in the WordPress community and Do the Woo is related very much to all things WordPress related. I think they even have a show by that name. So a couple things that kind of popped up for me. I was watching a YouTube live with Matt Medeiros and Mark Szymanski, forgive me for not knowing how to pronounce your last name, but during this one, it&#8217;s great to see from Mark&#8217;s eyes sometimes because Mark is a young adult in his twenties, I believe, in the WordPress community and beginning to understand open source and contribution.</p>



<p>And I think that when I think about myself at that point, I was finding WordPress 2.3 and Moodle. So I come from other open source, and at that I found the WordPress philosophies and I thought, oh, this is for me, the ones numbered zero through three, the four philosophies of open source, that area spoke deeply to me about code being free, everyone can modify and edit and all of this and has really captivated me. I don&#8217;t know if today with as much software as is available and as much user experience as people can have at their fingertips. At that time, CMSs were new and WordPress WordPress was just for blogging and not for the rest of your website certainly. And there were no pages or sidebars or any of those things. So back then open source had a lot of potential and it really captivated a lot of interest.</p>



<p>These days though, the 20 something crowd is not necessarily thinking first about open source. They&#8217;re just thinking of the tool to get the job done. Open source may or may not be on the radar, and if they even are aware of how WordPress gets made, they may not understand their own responsibility for providing feedback. There is a talk I gave at WordCamp Montclair a year and a half ago, and I redid it at Phoenix as a backup speaker this year called We Are They, and it&#8217;s on WordPress TV, but it&#8217;s about this idea that if you&#8217;re using WordPress and you complain into the ether about why did they do this or that, to go log the issue in the place and provide that feedback. And there have been a few YouTubers in the last couple of days even that we&#8217;re really looking into one shedding light on the need to do that, but also two, hey, we&#8217;re logging this stuff and it&#8217;s maybe getting overlooked. And so there was some confusion around this that I thought maybe we could tackle a little bit. Robert, has there been a time in any open-source project where you have directed others to go provide some feedback? And how did that experience go?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Oh gosh, it&#8217;s brutally painful.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Why is that painful?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It&#8217;s painful. People are not inspired. They don&#8217;t know. A lot of times the feedback loops aren&#8217;t there. So you might go in there the first time, drop a ticket, look at a repo and either be overwhelmed by whatever jargon exists, and then it just goes into the ether. Nine times out of 10, you&#8217;re waiting for someone to pick up that question, actually do something with that. To your point about Juliet, how many years was that sitting there? Again,</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />It was a long time and it came down to I&#8217;m quitting doing this, I need to go pick up client work. Or you&#8217;re giving me the keys and we got to move it and I need funded. And I get that.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />And so as folks get used to much more, I don&#8217;t want to say immediate gratification, but at least some kind of awareness of what&#8217;s going on. Open-source projects need to implement the expectation level of, oh, I hit a button at my bank and I got an immediate response either from a chatbot or a human being or whatever. We need to be able to do that. We need to keep up with the Joneses in that kind of user experience because submitting tickets is a user experience.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yeah, so in the presentation that I did, if your issue was related to Gutenberg, here&#8217;s the Gutenberg repo, you could leave a comment and not provide code, and that&#8217;s okay. So if you want to either open up a discussion or reply to something, here&#8217;s how to go find and see if anyone else brought the topic up and then how to go provide feedback or how to open a new ticket. If it is related to the functionality of WordPress dot org&#8217;s website, where to go log that, that&#8217;s another place. And so the experience Mark was sharing is that he seems interested, I&#8217;m just getting to know him a little bit. He seems interested in doing these things, but he doesn&#8217;t know where to go to do it. And there&#8217;s not really a clear map of some of those things, how to log the feedback in the right places.</p>



<p>And then you have someone like Matt Medeiros who very understandably has been in our community in the WordPress space a long time. And in our project we have two dozen different teams, and then we have some working groups that aren&#8217;t attached to a team and we, oh, it&#8217;s a thing. And so how do you find where to go log this stuff or where are, for instance, proposals, that was something that Matt brought up and was sharing about searching through make WordPress dot org for proposals. I have provided a link for the show notes that&#8217;s basically just a customized Google search of show me anything on make dot WordPress dot org from all two dozen teams in the past. I dunno, I might&#8217;ve set it to a year that used the word proposal because there&#8217;s no other clear way to do that. But then over in Gutenberg, there are also proposals sitting inside of Gutenberg&#8217;s GitHub repo, and they don&#8217;t make it to a make website. And sometimes that&#8217;s the case for certain teams. Gutenberg is within core, but if you want to see the proposals about what the block editor is doing or the site editing experience is doing, you&#8217;re going to need to pay attention to it in the Gutenberg repo. And then what happens if you write a proposal? What&#8217;s the next step?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Yes, that is a question.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I&#8217;m shaking my hands, which no one can see. We&#8217;re audio-only. But it&#8217;s just like that both hands in the air of frustration of, again, the user experience of trying to get stuff done.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />So Robert in Joomla, how did proposals get handled?</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />To some degree, it was a much smaller community and we didn&#8217;t have 4,000 teams like WordPress does. So it was much easier to actually get in front of team leads just right off the bat and be like, here&#8217;s my proposal, here&#8217;s my idea. Then team leads would take and run with that. So being able just to have that contact with the leader of what&#8217;s going on, then that would be actually put into more of the big development process or bug fixes or proposals and whatnot.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />So to that point, in WordPress, we do not use the term lead outside of, we have core release leads. Matt, usually, is that on most of the release processes.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Matt Mullenweg. There&#8217;s lots of Matts in the world.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes. And then we have some folks that historically have held this title and it&#8217;s now become more of an honorary title. Folks like if you&#8217;ve been in the WordPress space, Helen Hou-Sandí and others, Dion Hulse, this crew are some of the originals of the release lead cycle and process. Some of them are still with the project and some are no longer with the project, but proposals overall across all the teams, there is no uniformity to that in our case. Other open source projects, like for instance later in the show notes, I have one on PHP has a request for comments, which is a bit akin to a proposal. It&#8217;s saying, here&#8217;s the pitch, give some comments, and then they have a defined procedure after you give those comments if it needs to go to a vote, who does the voting, et cetera. And these are points that Mark was bringing up.<br />Is there any standardized? What happens after someone writes a proposal? Well, sometimes it just sits there. Earlier today I had a meeting related to, there is a post in our show notes here about should the DEIB working group Five for the Future new contributor mentorship be all merged inside of the sustainability team? And it was brought up that Birgit Olzem had written a proposal for a DEIB team exclusively like a year ago. And right now it&#8217;s just waiting on Matt to respond to one way or the other. And for lack of a response, there&#8217;s a lack of activity happening. And that experience for the community is not ideal. There&#8217;s no standardization to the process. And also are the proposals going to be on make or are they going to be in a GitHub repo or what team site should something like that go to and how do we handle those?</p>



<p>So I think it was covered pretty well in this particular video, but I can understand why people have these questions. And I&#8217;m seeing currently a couple of other YouTubers that are expressing similar concerns, similar questions, and confusion. And what I want to sort of emphasize there is to look at it again, with fresh eyes, there are some people that are new to understanding contribution no matter what their age, they&#8217;re just new to experiencing what it means to contribute or where to provide appropriate feedback besides just yelling into YouTube and Twitter. I mean, those feel soothing for a moment or two, but it does nothing to actually, it&#8217;s not recorded somewhere that people could take action on that, right? It&#8217;s not somewhere that people have to be confronted with dealing with that type of thing and seeing a bit of that type of activity going on.</p>



<p>And also there are some questions. So WPTuts, on YouTube, I don&#8217;t recall the gentleman&#8217;s name. I can say that the gentleman that was doing WPTuts the YouTube video also had a lot of those same kind of thoughts, questions, and concerns. If I provide the feedback, is anyone paying attention? I saw recently a contributor Aurooba, a couple of us know who Aurooba is in our community. Aurooba provided a pull request, which means that she fixed it in code, she saw a bug, she fixed it in code, she submitted a pull request to Gutenberg, and then in 6.6, that bug was fixed by somebody else&#8217;s more recent rendition of the same solution and how inappropriate that that can feel and what can we do to sort of wrangle some of those experiences in a bit better. And so that&#8217;s a little bit of what I&#8217;m observing, and it relates a bit to, for instance, governance.</p>



<p>That has sometimes been a hot topic. I&#8217;m not going to make it one today, but Red Hat has a really good article, ironically, Red Hat who took Red Hat Enterprise Linux that runs a lot of hosting environments and pulled it back to private. Red Hat has a good article about the different kinds of governance models. And on some of the same videos, people were inquiring what type of governance model is WordPress because things like proposals have no standardization, and we do fall under what&#8217;s known as Benevolent Dictator for Life. Matt does not enjoy that term, but it is not unique to WordPress.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Linux in general is, I mean, Linus Torvaldsds, that&#8217;s where it was born.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes, exactly. And so basically a lot of the decision-making process resides upon the Project co-founder at this time, and that&#8217;s why procedures are maybe where they are looking for a way forward. I&#8217;m going to keep pushing on looking for how we can improve this process. I recognize that our project leadership is a small crew that has a lot of responsibility, especially when 43% of the web rides on their decision-making. So improving that experience is something that I care deeply about, about how we can continue encouraging folks to come provide that feedback, and then ensuring that things like what Aurooba experienced don&#8217;t fall off the radar that we continually look for, oh, here&#8217;s somebody actually already solved the thing, or somebody provided some really valuable feedback. How do we get this feedback heard by those that need to and take action upon it? It&#8217;s a lot to kind of wrangle and deal with.</p>



<p>And I admire recently that Anne McCarthy organized a bunch of the YouTubers that seem to have similar interests like this together for a video to try and unite the YouTuber community because that is a weird niche. I would say they&#8217;re not going to be as much active in Make WordPress Slack, although I&#8217;ve seen more of that and I&#8217;m delighted by it. But they have a whole subset of the community that we don&#8217;t see at events. They have a whole subset of the community that we don&#8217;t see in Slack, and they can really help bridge those connections if done correctly.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Yes, I mean, I would just love to have every you dropped &#8217;em in, but just now. But really, if you&#8217;re interested in working on the project in WordPress, step one, make WordPress, get on that Slack. A lot of these questions when I talked about, or when you asked about how was this kind of feedback done in the Joomla space, and this is years ago. I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s changed now, but at least get on the Slack. You can find the leaders and have that direct question answered one way or the other. And it would be nice if every team had almost like a triage coordinator, just to Courtney&#8217;s eyes just really big.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I&#8217;m nodding. I&#8217;m thinking, oh, I would love to see project manager layers throughout.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I&#8217;m just going for triage. You&#8217;re required to get back within 30 to 60 days and flag it for yes, this will move forward, or no, don&#8217;t have time.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I think in addition, maybe Robert, we do have triage work that happens, especially for Core Editor. I know Damon Cook has been really working on that one. Damon contributes on behalf of WP Engine. There are a few others that are in that space for sure. But also I think that we need to do that holistically throughout the whole project. Last bit of news that I have coming in is that just issued within the past week</p>



<p>, is the state of React informal report about the React community. About React, the open-source project as well. It is part of the JavaScript community holistically. It&#8217;s a lot of what Gutenberg is built on. You can</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Check out. I was going to say, why do we care about React?</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Yes, Gutenberg. Gutenberg uses a lot of React. So you could find that information at 2023 dot state of react.com. It will be in the show notes, but it&#8217;s really interesting to look at contributors to the React community and what kind of feedback that they are offering too. So that&#8217;s the hit list of the news that I&#8217;ve got for this week. It was good seeing you, Robert, and I look forward to our next episode together.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Great seeing you again, Courtney. Now that we have at least August, I think minimal to no work, travel break before WordCamp US hits us square in the face.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />I know I&#8217;m the lead organizer for contributor day, so I will have a lot more brainpower in October during Hacktoberfest.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Thank you, Courtney.</p>



<p>Courtney:<br />Thank you, Robert.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong>Open Talk on Open Source</strong>, hosts <strong>Courtney and Robert </strong>recap their experiences at WordCamp Europe, highlighting key presentations on the future sustainability of open source by Joost and Juliet. </p>



<p>They have a conversation about the importance of community connections, the challenges in WordPress contributions, and the necessity of funding and supporting open source projects. The chats moves into the significance of testing, the complexities of governance, and the pivotal role of the WordPress community in fostering collaboration and innovation. Links</p>



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



<p><strong>WordCamp Europe Recap</strong>: Courtney and Robert reflect on their experiences and memorable moments from WordCamp Europe, emphasizing the importance of such events for community building and networking.</p>



<p><strong>Open Source Sustainability</strong>: Joost and Juliet&#8217;s presentation highlighted the critical role of open source in daily technology use and the need for sustainable funding and support for these projects.</p>



<p><strong>Challenges in Contributions</strong>: The discussion addressed the difficulties contributors face, including the lack of clear pathways for providing feedback and the need for better support and recognition for volunteer efforts.</p>



<p><strong>Importance of Testing</strong>: Both speakers stressed the necessity of thorough testing, especially with beta releases, to ensure the stability and security of WordPress and other open source projects.</p>



<p><strong>Governance and Decision-Making</strong>: The episode explored the complexities of governance in open source projects, particularly the role of project leaders and the need for more standardized processes for handling proposals and feedback.</p>



<p><strong>Funding and Support</strong>: The conversation underscored the importance of securing funding for open source development and the need for organizations to support contributors financially.</p>



<p><strong>Empowering New Contributors:</strong> There was a focus on encouraging new contributors to get involved, providing them with the necessary guidance and support to navigate the contribution process effectively.</p>



<p><strong>Future of Open Source</strong>: The episode wraps with a look at the future of open source, emphasizing the ongoing need for collaboration, innovation, and community support to drive progress and sustainability.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/03/keynote-sustainable-open-source-is-the-future/">Sustainable Open Source is the Future, Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer, WordCamp Europe 2024</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/03/panel-democratising-opportunities/">Panel at WordCamp Europe 2024: Democratising Opportunities</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://typo3.org/project/press/press-releases/open-website-alliance/english">Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3, and WordPress join forces in a leadership-level alliance</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://academind.com/tutorials/state-of-react-2024">State of the React 2024</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://allthingsopen.org/">All Things Open</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nYye07EPlI">Matt and Mark on WordPress</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://typo3.org/fileadmin/t3o_common_storage/documents/press_releases/2023-07_Open_Letter_to_EU_Legislators/Open_Letter_on_the_Significance_of_Free_and_Open_Source_Software_in_the_EU_s_Proposed_Cyber_Resilience_Act.pdf">Open Letter on the Significance of Free and Open Source Software<br />in the EU’s Proposed Cyber Resilience Act</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 01 Aug 2024 09:30:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"Gravatar: Better Links, Simple Messaging, Developer Tools, and More";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"http://blog.gravatar.com/?p=1976";s: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:92:"https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/31/better-links-simple-messaging-developer-tools-and-more/";s: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:5967:"<p>July&#8217;s been a whirlwind, and we&#8217;ve got some exciting updates to share. We&#8217;ve been working hard to make your profile for the web shine even brighter.</p>



<p>Let&#8217;s dive in!</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Links That Pop</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2800" height="1720" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1990" />



<p>Your Gravatar profile is evolving into the ultimate Link In Bio tool. Now you can add thumbnails and descriptions to your links, turning your profile into a dynamic showcase. </p>



<p>Show off your latest project, highlight your blog, or feature your portfolio with style. It&#8217;s like giving your digital presence a makeover, all in one place.</p>



<p>And here&#8217;s a little bonus: <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/06/26/link-your-gravatar-profile-with-a-free-custom-domain/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claim your free .link domain</a>. It&#8217;s your chance to own your corner of the web. Pretty neat, right?</p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a blogger, creator, student, or professional, your Gravatar profile is now your go-to spot for sharing everything about you.</p>



<p><a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/links" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Add new links to your profile here.</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Networking, Simplified</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2880" height="2160" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/contact-sharing-nfc-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2003" />



<p>Remember the awkward dance of exchanging contact info at events or with a new acquaintance? Those days are over. </p>



<p>Share your Gravatar profile link, and you&#8217;re instantly connected. On mobile, we&#8217;ve added an &#8216;Add to contacts&#8217; button. One tap, and you&#8217;re in their address book (only any info you&#8217;ve made public, no worries). </p>



<p>We&#8217;ve even spruced up the QR code for your profile. Networking just got a whole lot smoother.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Simple Contact Form, Your Way</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2880" height="2160" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/profile-message.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2000" />



<p>We&#8217;ve introduced a handy messaging feature. When enabled, other Gravatar users can send you a short message without seeing your email. It&#8217;s like a digital handshake, complete with their Gravatar profile info. You&#8217;re in control of whether to reply to the email and continue the conversation.</p>



<p>To turn it on, visit the <a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/avatars">Contact info tab</a> in the profile editor and toggle <em>&#8216;Allow anyone to send me a message&#8217;</em>. That&#8217;s it!<a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/contact-info/email"></a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Picture Perfect Avatars</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2800" height="1720" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1992" />



<p>Our new photo editor is faster, mobile-friendly, and packed with tools to make your avatar stand out:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Filters</li>



<li>Stickers</li>



<li>Brightness</li>



<li>Contrast</li>



<li>Temperature</li>



<li>Vignette and more<br /></li>
</ul>



<p>Upload a <a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/avatars">new </a><a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/avatars" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">avatar</a> image to give it a spin.</p>



<p>And look for the photo editor to be expanded and added to all photo uploads in Gravatar in the weeks to come.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Quick Editor for Developers</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2800" height="1720" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1993" />



<p>Developers, we&#8217;ve got you covered!</p>



<p>Say hello to the Quick Editor! Now users can update their Gravatar right in your app or website. It&#8217;s seamless integration at its finest. And keep an eye out — a native mobile SDK avatar editor is on the horizon.</p>



<p><a href="https://docs.gravatar.com/sdk/web-components/quickeditor/">Learn more about the Quick Editor here.</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Settings Simplified</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2800" height="1720" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-6.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1995" />



<p>We&#8217;ve tidied up your account settings into one neat page. </p>



<p>Privacy, security, language preferences, timezone &#8211; it&#8217;s all there. Your data, your rules.</p>



<p><a href="https://gravatar.com/profile/?modal=account-settings&path=general">Go here to give your account settings a quick review.</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Fresh Face, Same Mission</h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="2679" height="1592" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/homepage.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2017" />



<p>Oh, and one more thing! </p>



<p>We&#8217;ve given our home page a complete makeover. It&#8217;s not just a new coat of paint &#8211; we&#8217;ve redesigned it to better reflect our mission of empowering your digital identity. </p>



<p>Pop over to <a href="https://gravatar.com">gravatar.com</a> and check it out. We think you&#8217;ll love how it showcases all the ways Gravatar can amplify your online presence.</p>



<p>These updates aren&#8217;t just cool features. They&#8217;re about empowering you to create and manage your online identity with ease. We&#8217;re not just about avatars anymore — we&#8217;re your digital profile hub.</p>



<p>So go ahead, take these new features for a spin and share the links to your profile near and far. We can&#8217;t wait to see how you use them to showcase your awesome self across the web.</p>



<p>Happy Gravatar-ing!</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, 31 Jul 2024 14:10:17 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Ronnie Burt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:86:"WPTavern: #130 – Elena Panciera &amp; Chiara Pennetta on Making the Web for the Deaf";s: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=157578";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/130-elena-panciera-chiara-pennetta-on-making-the-web-for-the-deaf";s: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:38779:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things, WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, making the web a better place for those who are deaf.</p>



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



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



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Elena Panciera and Chiara Pennetta.</p>



<p>Elena is a freelance consultant specializing in inclusive and accessible languages. She champions, linguistic inclusivity, advocating for simplifying language to aid understanding for non-native speakers across all languages. She believes in providing tools to make text more comprehensible for everyone.</p>



<p>Chiara has been a special needs educator for the past two years. Deaf since infancy, Chiara underwent cochlear implant surgery four years ago, significantly improving her hearing. This transformative experience deepened, and altered, her connection to her deaf identity, and spurred her to explore issues of deafness and accessibility.</p>



<p>They&#8217;re joining us to discuss the important topic of accessibility online. Accessibility is often an overlooked aspect of web development and event planning, and there are significant challenges and opportunities in making content accessible to diverse audiences.</p>



<p>Elena and Chiara walk us through their personal journeys and professional insights, shedding light on the varying needs within the deaf community.</p>



<p>Chiara shares her experiences of navigating a world that is increasingly leaning towards video content. And how platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have improved accessibility through automatic captioning.</p>



<p>Elena highlights the importance of these features, not only for deaf individuals, but also for a broader audience that benefits from reading captions.</p>



<p>We talk about the implications of the European Accessibility Act, set to revolutionize accessibility requirements for websites. What will this mean for developers and content creators? Are captions enough, or should we aim for sign language interpretations as well, despite their complexity and cost?</p>



<p>We also talk about the essential principles of simplification in transcription, and our AI tools are shaping how we deliver accessible content. Chiara emphasizes the diverse needs of individuals with hearing impairments, and why aligning transcriptions with the original content is crucial.</p>



<p>Towards the end, we explore technologies which are improving communication for the deaf community, and the practical steps WordPress events can take to be more inclusive.</p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a web developer, event planner, or just passionate about accessibility, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Elena Panciera and Chiara Pennetta.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Elena Panciera and Chiara Pannetta. Very nice to have you both with me.</p>



<p>[00:04:10] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:04:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;re in WordCamp Europe. It is Saturday, so it&#8217;s the final day of the conference, and I&#8217;m talking to these two fine people about a topic that they spoke about. It was yesterday I think, and so we&#8217;re going to get into that topic in a moment. And it&#8217;s a topic that, I confess, I don&#8217;t know very much about. So hopefully they&#8217;re going to tell me, and educate me a lot about it.</p>



<p>But before we do that, one at a time, could I ask you just to introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you come from, where you live, what you do for a living, that kind of thing. So let&#8217;s go.</p>



<p>[00:04:42] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m Elena Panciera, and I&#8217;m a freelance consultant. I&#8217;m expert about inclusive and accessible languages. And, well, I work as a freelancer, so I&#8217;m a trainer, I make consultancies about accessibility, and about how to be kind and respectful with language. This is what I do.</p>



<p>[00:05:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:05:06] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Hello, my name is Chiara Pennetta. I am 30 years old from Italy. I work as a teacher in special needs education, since two years ago. I studied Ancient Greek and Latin, and then I specialised in teaching Italian as a second language. But four years ago, I got two cochlear implants because I am deaf since I was one and a half years ago. Five years ago in fact, I chose to try and improve my hearing with this surgery, which is called cochlear implant.</p>



<p>In that moment I became more hearing from a medical point of view, but I became also more deaf from an identity point of view. And so I chose to delve more into the topic of deafness and accessibility. And that was when I opened my Instagram page, which is called the undeaf, because I don&#8217;t feel hearing nor deaf.</p>



<p>And that was when I met Elena, and we started studying, and working together to make the world a more accessible place. And that was also when I decided to be a teacher for the people with disabilities in high school here in Italy.</p>



<p>[00:06:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much. Can I just ask you, you said that your medical deafness had improved, but your, I think you said identity. Did you say identity? Your identity deafness or something. What did that mean? What did you mean by that?</p>



<p>[00:06:42] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> I think that deafness is considered a disability by most people. So the lack of hearing. But deafness is also a community, a culture, and a language. Because if you start studying sign language like I did four years ago, you will find out that there is a new whole world to discover about deaf identity.</p>



<p>For me, that was life changing. It&#8217;s a paradox because I found out about my deaf identity only when I improved my hearing. It&#8217;s a paradox I know. But my cochlear implant are more visible than the hearing aid I have had before. And so my deafness became more visible, but also more invisible because my speech improved. My access to the world of sounds improved. Also my identity, like I said before.</p>



<p>[00:07:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s really interesting. Okay, thank you for clearing that up. I appreciate it.</p>



<p>So during the course of this interview, I will be asking questions, and it doesn&#8217;t really matter who wants to take it, but thank you for the introductions.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s begin then. So the first question that I&#8217;ve got really is, well, I should probably introduce what you spoke about at WordCamp Europe. Your topic was called Digital and Linguistic Accessibility Techniques and Strategies for deaf people. So we&#8217;re going to try and explore that a little bit.</p>



<p>And my first question then is, what kind of experiences on the web are different if you are deaf? So I am in the fortunate position to have good eyesight, I wear glasses, but I have good eyesight. You know, my hands and my legs all work. I can hold a mouse, I can type on a keyboard, and my hearing is good. So I genuinely don&#8217;t know what it would be like to browse the internet, to move around online if I couldn&#8217;t hear. So could you just describe the difference it would be, for me, if I had deafness.</p>



<p>[00:08:44] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Sure. I think that the biggest difference is about all the video, and sound, musical content, of course. So anything that you experience with your hearing is different, if you don&#8217;t have hearing at all, or are partially deaf. Any video, any podcast of course, any web content which is accessible by audio feed, needs to be supported with the captions or transcription, or like signals. I don&#8217;t know, maybe it is not web related, but in movies when you have captions, and someone knocks at the door, the captions signal that there is someone knocking. So sound signals and transcription is really important. I think that that&#8217;s the most important thing to say.</p>



<p>But yesterday, Elena and I really focus that, in many occasions, captions and transcription are not enough. Because many people who are born deaf, and maybe don&#8217;t use hearing aids, sometimes are not proficient in understanding an oral spoken language, even if it is in a written form.</p>



<p>So they can have struggles in understanding complex, and the longest sentences with the complex syntax, and the vocabulary. Elena, which she&#8217;s expert in language accessibilities, really gave tools to write in a way that is accessible to people who don&#8217;t have a high level of proficiency in understanding a written text.</p>



<p>[00:10:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, so the assumption then that if I, for example, produce a video, and I&#8217;m very, the word I&#8217;m going to use is verbose, meaning I use too much language, I&#8217;m talking but my sentences are complicated and what have you. Are you suggesting then you need to bear in mind making it more straightforward? Because if I&#8217;m reading it, it might also be the case that my level of cognition, understanding what I&#8217;m reading, may also impact my ability to understand that content. So whoever wants to take that.</p>



<p>[00:10:54] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Yes, actually, we have to keep in mind that not everybody has the same level of proficiency in any language, and especially in Italian. Because in English it&#8217;s quite easier to have shorter sentences, and since it&#8217;s a very commonly used language amongst a lot of people that have other languages as first languages, English is more simple. But in Italian, for example, we commonly use very long sentences, with a lot of clauses that are not coordinate clauses, and subjunctives, and a lot of difficult words.</p>



<p>The oral Italian is simpler, and the written Italian, we tend to use more difficult words, and more difficult structures. And so it&#8217;s important to keep it simple, and to try to think that not everybody have Italian as a first language. And this happens also for every other language. So for English, but also for German, for Spanish and so on. And so we have tools that can help us trying to make a text simpler.</p>



<p>We have also artificial intelligence that can help us. There are ChatGPT, and Gemini, for example, but also tools that are integrated into WordPress. For example, Yoast or Semrush have tools that help simplify text, and choose simpler words, and more common words, for example.</p>



<p>[00:12:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I ask you a question about this podcast? So when I have finished editing this, I will make a transcription and I will try to make it perfect, exactly what you say. However, sometimes, because you are speaking in your native language is Italian, I sometimes take the position that it&#8217;s better for me to translate it into the English that I would like you to have said, if you were an English speaker. What do you think about that? I&#8217;m sometimes faced with the difficult thing, okay, I think they meant to say it this way, so I&#8217;ll write it that way, whereas you didn&#8217;t actually say it that way. What should I do?</p>



<p>[00:13:25] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Actually, this is a very interesting question, because I think there are also different positions about that. Because sometimes I&#8217;ve been told that it&#8217;s better to have very, very, transcriptions that are perfect. And so they transcript exactly what the speaker said. But actually, in terms of accessibility, maybe it could be more interesting, even simplify a little bit the language. So make the sentences shorter and, I don&#8217;t know, adapt a little bit the transcription.</p>



<p>[00:14:02] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> I would like to add something on this topic. I don&#8217;t know if you ever noticed that in many movies when you buy the DVD, or Netflix too I think, you can choose from normal captions, basic captions, and the caption that are all called subtitles for the hearing impaired.</p>



<p>[00:14:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I have not come across that. So this is new. It&#8217;s interesting, keep going, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:14:25] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Sometimes you have two kinds of transcription for movies, or a TV series because basic captions transcribe literally everything that the actors say. While captions for deaf people are often simplified in the vocabulary and grammar, because maybe the proficiency language is a bit different, and they need a language structure which is more simple and accessible.</p>



<p>[00:14:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And also, I would imagine keeping up. Being able to read at the speed that somebody is saying something. So if a, let&#8217;s imagine a movie on Netflix, if an actor is speaking fairly quickly, and you are transcribing every single word, it&#8217;s hard to read at the speed of speech. If we just take out unnecessary words and just sum up the idea behind it. That&#8217;s really interesting because you have to have an opinion about what they intended to say, and how much you can simplify it, because you might lose some of the context.</p>



<p>But you can do both. You put the exact transcript, but you have the secondary choice, I&#8217;m going to use air quotes, the simpler version, fewer words, easier to understand, less complicated words, shorter words. Ah, that&#8217;s really interesting. I had no idea that existed. Do you want to add something to that?</p>



<p>[00:15:46] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> This is the principle of simplify and facilitate. So there are these two different concepts, the simplification and facilitation.</p>



<p>Simplification means that we adapt and change the original text. And with facilitation, we can add tools to help the reader understand the text, but the original text that remain the same. You can add glossaries. You can add another version, a simplified version, or a shorter version. Because we could have also difficulties in keeping up the attention for a long time, and to read a very long text, this could be difficult. So yeah, we have different tools to improve the accessibility.</p>



<p>And actually accessibility is multimedia, and going across different tools, and different medias. For example, the transcription is different from the audio, and also we can add graphics, illustrations, or visual tools to improve the understanding for text.</p>



<p>[00:17:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What do these tools do? So I&#8217;m imagining that I&#8217;ve transcribed this, and I&#8217;ve got my perfect, in air quotes, transcription. I&#8217;m really happy with it. Do I then just copy and paste what I&#8217;ve got, put it into a tool, click a button, and it will go through it with artificial intelligence, for example, and just shorten everything, make it more brief, as we&#8217;ve just described. What do these tools do? And could you name a few, because I don&#8217;t, I&#8217;ve never heard of any of them, so I&#8217;d like to go out and find what some of them are.</p>



<p>[00:17:33] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Actually, yes, there are some tools like ChatGPT, Gemini. Or specific tools like Capito that can help you doing this in a automatic way. But actually it&#8217;s always better, in my opinion, to check what the artificial intelligence do.</p>



<p>The human intelligence is still better than the artificial one. And actually you can use your critical sense. I don&#8217;t know if I can use this in English? Yes, because you can really think what is important, and maybe you can also ask, in your case, you could ask us, what would you mean with this sentence? Because it was not in a perfect English, so we can tell you and make it right. I don&#8217;t know how to say, but let the mistakes be only in the oral podcast, and make a better version in the written text.</p>



<p>[00:18:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, so a good example of that that&#8217;s coming into my mind might be, if both of us said, I don&#8217;t know the word like a lot. It&#8217;s commonly used in English, we say like, like, like, like, and also um, um, you know, those kind of things. Would you want that to be kept in a transcription, or even the audio? Because I tend to, when I edit this podcast, I tend to get rid of the bits, well, for example, of silence. There might be five seconds of silence where you think of your answer in this podcast episode. I take the position, let&#8217;s get rid of that silence. Let&#8217;s make it just so that one word follows the next word.</p>



<p>And also I take out the ums, and the ahs, and the likes and things. I&#8217;m really making a completely new version of what you said. Is that a good idea? Would you prefer to listen to exactly what we record today? Or is it okay to edit things out? Is there a better way of doing it?</p>



<p>[00:19:28] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> I think oral version of a thing and the written version, or the painted version, or the dance version of something are, of course, different things, because they&#8217;re different products. So we can&#8217;t expect to be the same, it wouldn&#8217;t be right. They are two different things, so it&#8217;s normal. That&#8217;s not the same thing because you can, you perceive those two things with two different senses. And so I think it is right to delete the ums and the like, because it will be not pleasurable to read a text full of ums and like.</p>



<p>It depends also, what is the main goal that you want to achieve with that text? It is more important that people can understand what the vibe was, or what the content was.</p>



<p>I think that it is also really personal because, for example, I can hear pretty well with my cochlear implant, so I like my caption and my transcriptions to be really faithful to the original. Because if I hear, and at the same time I read, I like those two things to be the same. Or maybe if I watch a movie, I like that, when I see the lips moving, I hear the same thing, and I read the same thing on my captions.</p>



<p>But other deaf people, or maybe other people who need other kind of accessibilities, like people with learning difficulties, or people who with cognitive disabilities, they may need, and want, a different kind of test, to more get to the point, to more understand it. So I think that it is impossible to have a solution which is perfect for everyone.</p>



<p>[00:21:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess one of the things that I could do, if I had enough time and enough resources, I could also translate this from English, and have it in Italian, or Spanish, or Portuguese, or whatever language we can imagine. It will just be done in English though.</p>



<p>In a way, the ability to read a language gives you more options to make something visible, available to people from different cultures. If it&#8217;s just a YouTube video with no captions, no subtitles, and it&#8217;s just in English, only English people, or not English people, English speaking people can understand that.</p>



<p>If you throw in the captions and the subtitles, you can actually make the exact same piece of content available to the whole world. If you could translate it into Chinese, and Japanese, and everything. But unfortunately, that&#8217;s not going to be the case, in this case.</p>



<p>Okay, back to the questions. This may seem like a silly question because, as I said, I have good hearing. Does the amount of deafness, and I don&#8217;t know what the correct word is for that but, for example, imagine somebody who has no hearing at all. Or somebody who has partial hearing, maybe one ear isn&#8217;t working as well, or if they can hear half of the sounds, or anything in between. Is there a difference there? Do we have to make things available in different ways? Just tell us what that&#8217;s like.</p>



<p>[00:22:35] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Yeah, I think we should talk about deafnesses, plural. Because we have a wide variety of shades of deafness. Mainly since when a technology came in, I don&#8217;t know if 70 years ago we didn&#8217;t have hearing aids and cochlear implant, which work in a certain way.</p>



<p>Today, we have a wide amount of technology that can help retrieve our hearing. But even if two people with the same level of hearing loss use the same kind of hearing aid, it is not obvious that they could gain the same amount of hearing gain.</p>



<p>So definitely is a wide word, it depends on when you lose your hearing, before or after the age in which children learn to speak. And so we have prelingual or postlingual deafness.</p>



<p>And of course you can lose your healing at different levels. So mild or profound hearing loss are different. Or we have deafness for elderly people, so late life. It&#8217;s a really, really wide word.</p>



<p>Some people learn sign languages since they are little children because they are born in deaf families, into deaf culture. Some others don&#8217;t, like I became deaf when I was one year and a half, and I was born in a hearing family. So I didn&#8217;t learn sign language up until four years ago for my personal curiosity.</p>



<p>That means that I learn how to speak through hearing aids and speech therapy. But I know many people who have the same amount of hearing loss as me, from a medical point of view, but have really different speech ability and language ability. We have a very wide, a very big variety of deaf world.</p>



<p>[00:24:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it feels to me like, when the internet came along, I don&#8217;t know, 1995 or something like that, that being a deaf person, you could access almost all of the internet because it was just images and text, that&#8217;s how the internet began. But more and more, fast forward to 2005, or whenever YouTube came along, video content started to rapidly take over. And now with TikTok, and apps, and the phone that you&#8217;ve got in your pocket, it feels like there&#8217;s more and more content that&#8217;s inaccessible to deaf people. Is that a trend? Is it becoming harder to use the internet? Things like YouTube, like I say, and TikTok, is that kind of taking over and making it more difficult?</p>



<p>[00:25:15] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> I don&#8217;t think it is becoming harder. I think that, maybe in the beginning, when videos weren&#8217;t captioned, yes. But now, we have automatic captions on TikTok, on Instagram mostly, and on YouTube. So even if the content creator doesn&#8217;t put on their captions, or their transcription, it is possible to activate automatic caption or automatic transcription.</p>



<p>[00:25:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask, do you need to tell TikTok or YouTube to do that, or does it automatically do it for you?</p>



<p>[00:25:48] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Yes, it&#8217;s the user responsibility because you have to click on a button to activate captions. But I think that deaf people&#8217;s lives changed with the internet because, I don&#8217;t remember the name, but back in the old days, it was invented like a phone who transcribed the phone calls. And when we started having video calls, deaf people were so happy because they could call each other, seeing each other, and use sign language during their phone calls. And so communication really exploded. It was a right that came a bit later for the deaf community, the signing deaf community of course.</p>



<p>[00:26:30] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> I think that also, the ability to read lips with video calls is a good accessibility sign. And captioning is getting better actually. And also, captioning is not used only by deaf people. Actually, I am one of those people that need captions because otherwise I hate the vocal messages. And I hate these kind of messages that are only oral, and so I prefer to read. And I&#8217;m not deaf actually, so accessibility can really help a lot of people, even if they&#8217;re not with disabilities.</p>



<p>[00:27:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> From everything that you&#8217;ve said, it really does sound like technology has improved dramatically the life of people who are deaf, and obviously you said it&#8217;s a spectrum. Yeah, when you mentioned about video calls, I hadn&#8217;t even thought about that. But suddenly you can see the person, lip read maybe, but also the sign language. It just made communication over a distance suddenly possible.</p>



<p>You could speak to people from all over the world, not rely on hearing, which of course on the phone call, the regular phone call, if you can&#8217;t see it, you couldn&#8217;t interact with it at all. Profound.</p>



<p>So technology is really helping. And I&#8217;ve got to say, dear listener, in front of me, about two feet away, I don&#8217;t know whose it is, but is a mobile phone. And the mobile phone is facing you two, and it&#8217;s translating in real time. And I&#8217;m watching it now, you&#8217;ve just turned it around so that I can see. So it&#8217;s two feet away, it must have the microphone switched on, and it&#8217;s translating everything I&#8217;m saying, and it&#8217;s translating it literally perfectly. It&#8217;s astonishing. And this is, what, just Google? Just Google?</p>



<p>[00:28:20] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Yes. It&#8217;s like a Google transcribe. There is an app free on the Google store. And this is my phone actually, because I have an Android phone, and she has an iPhone, that is more accessible for other things, I think.</p>



<p>[00:28:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But, whether you&#8217;ve got an Android phone or an iPhone, I am blown away by how good that is. And obviously I&#8217;ve never had to use it, so I&#8217;ve never really seen it. Can I just ask, dare I say, we&#8217;re going off message a little bit. Would that also enable me to talk to you in Italian? So for example, could it translate my English words, and the text on the screen would then be Italian? Can it do that as well?</p>



<p>[00:29:03] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Well, no. I think that you can, no, I know that you can set the language in which you are speaking. So if you now start speaking in Italian, I have to switch, on the app, the language to Italian, and it&#8217;ll start transcribing in Italian, or in any other language.</p>



<p>But if I wanted a live translation too, I think I&#8217;d have to use a computer, and open another app with artificial intelligence, that could transcribe and translate at the same time. There are application that can do that.</p>



<p>I actually saw, maybe yesterday, I saw on the laptop of the people who are helping out in the speech on the track one, and they had an application I think that said, if you want to change, on your device, the language of the captions, you could. So I think there may be people who couldn&#8217;t understand English, because yesterday we spoke in English, and there were also captions on the main screen, projected in English, that transcribed like now.</p>



<p>But I think maybe you could download an app or something that also translates into another language. So this is all the work of artificial intelligence. So I think that maybe because languages are so rich, and different, I think it is impossible to achieve a perfect translation. For the main content I think it&#8217;s useful as well.</p>



<p>[00:30:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Genuinely, I&#8217;m astonished by how good that is. And it&#8217;s enabling me, I mean you could have had headphones in, but you&#8217;ve chosen not to, but I&#8217;m noticing that you are looking down at it, and so you are seeing and reading what I&#8217;m saying in real time. That is profoundly amazing. This kind of stuff must make life a lot more straightforward, and a lot simpler. Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely brilliant.</p>



<p>Off pieced again, how do we do at WordPress events, helping out people who are deaf? Do we get it right? Do we have the right balance of, I don&#8217;t know, sign language, captioning? Do we do pretty well, or is there work that we still need to do?</p>



<p>[00:31:18] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Well, I am very happy with the captions, but I didn&#8217;t see any sign language interpreter. I don&#8217;t know if there, I didn&#8217;t see any, that&#8217;s my opinion, my experience. But I also didn&#8217;t ask for it because, even if I know sign language, I don&#8217;t rely on it to access to the world. So maybe if I ask for it, it would be possible to gain an interpreter.</p>



<p>But I think the problem is, I only know Italian sign language. Since there are many sign languages in the world that I don&#8217;t know, British or American sign language, I think it&#8217;ll be difficult to find an interpreter who can listen to English, and then in his or her mind, translate into Italian, and then translate again into Italian sign language. There are people who can, amazing people, but it&#8217;s not easy.</p>



<p>Or we could ask for an international sign interpreter. And the international sign is not an actual language, but it&#8217;s a mix of different sign languages, mostly based on ASL American Sign Language. And so I think that I could understand it, but I never tried.</p>



<p>But I&#8217;m really happy with the organisation. It was the first time for me to attend the WorldPress conference, nevertheless WordCamp Europe, so I felt really welcome, and my needs were met.</p>



<p>[00:32:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Good. Yeah, well, I&#8217;m pleased to hear it. I&#8217;ve no clue really as to whether or not, at some events, they do have sign language. But yeah, that&#8217;s an interesting point, I hadn&#8217;t really thought about that. It would have to be, the sign language would have to be, in English or American English, whichever. And then you would also have to understand that, as somebody that was using sign language, you&#8217;d have to not only be able to use the English sign language, but then presumably you&#8217;d have to translate it in your own head into Italian. So that, yeah, that would make life really difficult.</p>



<p>[00:33:18] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Yeah. Actually, in this kind of event, I think that the best solution is to ask people attending the conference, what do you need? Because actually, maybe you could have a person from France that communicates with French sign language, and they could need French sign language. And so it&#8217;s easier to meet their need, and to ask French sign language interpreter to help them. Because otherwise it could be really, really, expensive, you know, to translate versus toward every language.</p>



<p>[00:33:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. You can imagine there&#8217;d be 15 people standing on the stage, with the French translation, or the sign language, the English, the, I don&#8217;t know, Portuguese, or whatever. Yeah, that could be interesting.</p>



<p>So I know neither of you are lawyers. We established that at the beginning, but just, I&#8217;m near the end now, my question is all about website builders, people who build websites. That&#8217;s what most of us are here for. We&#8217;re building websites using WordPress to do that.</p>



<p>Is there any responsibility, any legal things that we need to know about? I know that in 2025 we&#8217;ve got the European Accessibility Act. Will it become required, for example, with video to have captions, things like that? Do you know? And I, again, I stress, you&#8217;re not lawyers, we understand. But, do you know if we, as website builders, are compelled to do that? I know that we should do that, it would be the right thing to do, and the moral thing to do. But I think sometimes it&#8217;s easy to not do those things because it&#8217;s cheaper, quicker, all of those things. So do you know if there&#8217;s any compulsion, any legal reason that we must do this?</p>



<p>[00:34:58] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Actually, yes. From the 2025, we have to think in a different way about accessibility because there is the European Accessibility Act that is going to be followed. We have to follow this act.</p>



<p>Actually, there are different levels of accessibility, and the captions, for example, they&#8217;re quite simple, and quite cheap with artificial intelligence. For example, a translation in sign language would be another level of accessibility that is not mandatory. It depends on how the budget is, and how also the aim of the company is.</p>



<p>Because maybe if a company know that it&#8217;s public, its audience is mainly, or a huge amount of people is deaf, it could decide to invest some money into having a sign language interpreter, for example, that is not mandatory. But the captions, well, are supposed to be there. And, yeah, also other things, transcriptions, but yeah.</p>



<p>[00:36:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ll have to wait and see, won&#8217;t we, how well it&#8217;s enforced next year. Because we&#8217;ll have the legislation, but it&#8217;ll be interesting to see if people adhere to it. And if they don&#8217;t adhere to it, whether or not they get, well, punished, for want of a better word. We&#8217;ll just have to see how that goes.</p>



<p>I think with the time coming up to nearly the hour, we&#8217;ll knock it on the head, as we say in the UK. We&#8217;ll end it there. But thank you for speaking to me about this today. I&#8217;m going to be really curious what you make of the transcription, and the edit of the audio that I do from this. I&#8217;m fascinated to see whether I over edited it. Whether I took out the ums, and the ahs, and the silences that we had, we are going to edit some mistakes out and things like that.</p>



<p>But I&#8217;m more curious about what you think of the transcription that I do, and whether or not it&#8217;s what you would&#8217;ve liked it to have been, or whether or not I overdid it. So let&#8217;s wait and see. I&#8217;ll send it to you before it comes out. But thank you so much for chatting to me today, both of you. I&#8217;ve really enjoyed it, and I&#8217;ve learned a lot. Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:37:11] <strong>Chiara Pennetta:</strong> Thank you to you.</p>



<p>[00:37:12] <strong>Elena Panciera:</strong> Thank you. It was really a pleasure to be here.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have Elena Panciera &amp; Chiara Pennetta.</p>



<p>Elena is a freelance consultant specialising in inclusive and accessible languages. She champions linguistic inclusivity, advocating for simplifying language to aid understanding for non-native speakers across all languages. She believes in providing tools to make text more comprehensible for everyone.</p>



<p>Chiara Pennetta has been a special needs educator for the past two years. Deaf since infancy, Chiara underwent cochlear implant surgery four years ago, significantly improving her hearing. This transformative experience deepened, and altered, her connection to her deaf identity and spurred her to explore issues of deafness and accessibility.</p>



<p>They’re joining us to discuss the important topic of accessibility online.</p>



<p>Accessibility is often an overlooked aspect of web development and event planning, and there are significant challenges and opportunities in making content accessible to diverse audiences. Elena and Chiara walk us through their personal journeys and professional insights, shedding light on the varying needs within the deaf community.</p>



<p>Chiara shares her experiences of navigating a world that is increasingly leaning towards video content, and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have improved accessibility through automatic captioning. Elena highlights the importance of these features, not only for deaf individuals, but also for a broader audience that benefits from reading captions.</p>



<p>We talk about the implications of the European Accessibility Act, set to revolutionise accessibility requirements for websites. What will this mean for developers and content creators? Are captions enough, or should we aim for sign language interpretations as well, despite their complexity and cost?</p>



<p>We also talk about the essential principles of simplification in transcription, and how AI tools are shaping how we deliver accessible content. Chiara emphasises the diverse needs of individuals with hearing impairments and why aligning transcriptions with the original content is crucial.</p>



<p>Towards the end we explore technologies which are improving communication for the deaf community, and the practical steps WordPress events can take to be more inclusive.</p>



<p>Whether you’re a web developer, event planner, or just passionate about accessibility, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>Elena and Chiara&#8217;s WordCamp Europe presentation: <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/session/digital-and-linguistic-accessibility-techniques-and-strategies-for-deaf-people/">Digital and linguistic accessibility techniques and strategies for deaf people</a></p>



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



<p><a href="https://www.semrush.com/">Semrush</a></p>



<p><a href="https://openai.com/chatgpt/">ChatGPT</a></p>



<p><a href="https://gemini.google.com/">Gemini</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.capito.eu/en/capitodigital/">Capito</a></p>



<p><a href="https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/accessibility/making-audio-more-accessible-two-new-apps/">Google Transcribe</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, 31 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:71:"Akismet: Landing Page Conversion Rates: 24 Proven Ways to Optimize Them";s: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:"http://akismet.com/?p=284070";s: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://akismet.com/blog/landing-page-conversion-rate/";s: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:39947:"<p>Your landing page is where first impressions are made. And from there, it’s where potential customers decide if they want to do business with you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Whether you’re a <a href="https://akismet.com/enterprise/">large enterprise</a> or a small business, this is an undeniable fact. Which means optimizing your landing page is super important. Your aim? To strive for more engagement and a higher conversion rate.&nbsp;</p>



<p>According to the <a href="https://unbounce.com/conversion-benchmark-report/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Conversion Benchmark Report</a> put together by Unbounce, the median conversion rate for landing pages across all industries is 4.3%.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So how can you ensure your landing pages meet that metric or do even better than average?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here, we’re covering 24 proven ways to boost your landing page conversion rates. These practical tips are designed to help you capture more leads and increase sales, regardless of whether you&#8217;re using WordPress or another platform.&nbsp;</p>



<span id="more-284070"></span>


<h2 id="1-create-a-captivating-header-or-hero section" class="wp-block-heading">1. Create a captivating header or hero&nbsp;section</h2>

<p>The header or hero section is the first thing visitors see on your landing page, so it needs to grab their attention and clearly communicate your value proposition. But more on that in a&nbsp;moment.</p>

<p>Be sure to use large, bold fonts to make your message stand out, and complement this with high&#8209;resolution images or background videos. The <a href="https://www.calm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Calm app</a>, for instance, uses ample white space and clear, compelling visuals to draw people&nbsp;in.</p>


<p>The image selected radiates a sense of calm — exactly what you’d hope to experience with the product at hand.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="787" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image.jpeg" alt="the Calm app website with two CTA buttons" class="wp-image-284072" />


<h2 id="2-state-a-clear-value proposition" class="wp-block-heading">2. State a clear value&nbsp;proposition</h2>

<p>Your value proposition should succinctly explain how your product or service solves customers&#8217; problems. Or it might show how it improves their situation or delivers specific benefits. No matter your approach, it should tell your ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition. And it shouldn’t take an entire paragraph to accomplish this&nbsp;mission.</p>


<p>An effective value proposition is a pretty important cornerstone for your entire marketing program —&nbsp;not just your landing pages. So if you don’t already have a permanent value proposition established for your company, you’ll want to spend some extra time with this step. Here are some extra tips to make the most of your efforts:</p>


<h3 id="be-specific-and-focus-on-tangible benefits" class="wp-block-heading">Be specific and focus on tangible&nbsp;benefits</h3>


<p>Steer clear of vague statements and industry jargon. Instead, talk about specific outcomes customers can expect and benefits you offer. So, instead of saying &#8220;Improve your productivity,&#8221; specify how and by how much. Something like, &#8220;Reduce unnecessary meetings to boost your team&#8217;s productivity by 40% in just one month&#8221;,​ is a much clearer value proposition.&nbsp;</p>


<h3 id="address-your-ideal-customerâs-pain points" class="wp-block-heading">Address your ideal customer’s pain&nbsp;points</h3>

<p>Understand your customers&#8217; challenges and explain how your product or service addresses these issues. Conducting customer research and gathering feedback can help you pinpoint these needs and incorporate them into your landing page&nbsp;copy.</p>

<h3 id="emphasize-what-sets-you apart" class="wp-block-heading">Emphasize what sets you&nbsp;apart</h3>


<p>This could be unique features, superior quality, exceptional customer service, or some new technology. Take P2 as an example. ​They keep their homepage or landing page simple, with a headline visible immediately. As of 2024, it includes, “A platform for teams to share, discuss, and collaborate openly, without interruption.”&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1600" height="838" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image.png" alt="P2 homepage with a clear value proposition" class="wp-image-284074" />



<p>And a quick scroll makes it abundantly clear that the value proposition here is a streamlined team communication and work reporting platform.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="3-write-compelling headlines" class="wp-block-heading">3. Write compelling&nbsp;headlines</h2>


<p>A compelling headline is critical for capturing your audience’s attention and encouraging them to read further. It’s the first thing visitors notice, and it sets the tone for the rest of your landing page.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To create headlines that convert, you need to ensure they immediately convey what your product or service is and the primary benefit it offers. Avoid ambiguous or clever phrases that might confuse visitors. Clear and direct headlines ensure that visitors understand the core message at a glance. For instance, <a href="https://www.grammarly.com">Grammarly</a> features a few headlines on its landing page, including, “Better writing, better results.”&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="534" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-2.jpeg" alt="Grammarly homepage with a clear headling" class="wp-image-284076" />



<p>Both of these headlines make it clear what customers stand to gain from using this service.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Beyond the benefit-focus, you can also follow a couple of tried and true rules for writing compelling headlines. For instance, you can use powerful words that evoke emotion and encourage action, like “Transform” or “Discover”.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Including numbers or specific data in your headline can make it more credible, too. Statistics, percentages, and specific figures attract more attention than generic statements.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="4-use visuals" class="wp-block-heading">4. Use&nbsp;visuals</h2>


<p>Visual elements matter a great deal, too. They help to break up text, illustrate key points, and keep visitors interested. So it’s obviously worthwhile to include only high-quality images on your landing page.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Doing so will make it look more professional. Any old image won’t do, however. Make sure the visuals you select are relevant to your content. For example, lifestyle images that depict people using your product in real&#8209;life scenarios can create an emotional connection with&nbsp;visitors​.</p>


<p>You could make use of background videos, too. These add a dynamic element to your hero section, making it more engaging. They should be short, relevant, and high-quality — of course — and feed into the overall visual narrative of your landing page.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


<p>A strategically&#8209;placed infographic is a nice touch, too. These images make it straightforward to display complex information in an accessible way. They can help explain processes, display statistics, and illustrate the benefits of your&nbsp;product.</p>


<h2 id="5-keep-forms-short-and-simple " class="wp-block-heading">5. Keep forms short and simple&nbsp;</h2>


<p>No one wants to have to spend several minutes completing a complex form. That’s why keeping yours short and simple can help boost the conversion rate on your landing page. This won’t necessarily apply to every industry, where some might need to capture a great deal of information to do business together&nbsp;properly.</p>


<p>For most, however, keeping the number of fields on your forms limited is a wise choice. Try to keep it all on one screen, too. Multistep forms can be effective in fields where you have complex data collection needs, but a straightforward 3-4 field form is still typically best.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Ensure that each form field has a clear, concise label that indicates what information is required, and make use of inline validation. This provides real-time feedback to people as they fill out the form.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This feature helps users correct errors immediately and increases the likelihood of form completion.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The <a href="https://akismet.com/talk-to-sales/">Akismet enterprise</a> contact page offers a solid example of an effective landing page contact form.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1600" height="866" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-1.png" alt="Akismet form with just a few fields" class="wp-image-284077" />



<p>It asks for straightforward, relevant information without being overwhelming. There’s just enough questions to segment submissions without plummeting conversion rates.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="6-avoid-using captcha" class="wp-block-heading">6. Avoid using&nbsp;CAPTCHA</h2>


<p><a href="https://akismet.com/blog/what-is-captcha/">CAPTCHAs are commonly used to prevent spam</a> and bot submissions on forms, but they can also create friction and frustration for genuine users. Any added friction in the conversion process can lead to an increased bounce rate. So, skipping the CAPTCHA on your landing page forms is the best approach.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Beyond the UX inconvenience they pose, CAPTCHAs also present accessibility issues and can be quite problematic for those with disabilities. Visually impaired people may find it challenging to complete visual CAPTCHAs, while audio CAPTCHAs may not be effective in noisy environments or for those with hearing impairments. A less accessible, inclusive website can make for a knock to your brand’s reputation, a lack of compliance with accessibility standards, and reduced conversion&nbsp;rates.</p>


<img width="1200" height="667" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-3.jpeg" alt="information about Akismet's features" class="wp-image-284078" />


<p>All that said, you still don’t want to be inundated with spam. Thankfully, there’s a better way to prevent this kind of&nbsp;annoyance.</p>


<p>Instead of relying on CAPTCHAs, using <a href="https://akismet.com/features/">Akismet</a> is an effective, cost-efficient solution. Akismet’s powerful spam filtering service can automatically detect and block spam submissions without requiring any user interaction.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Used on over 100 million sites, Akismet works continuously in the background without slowing down your site, and it boasts a 99.99% accuracy rate.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="7-focus-on benefits" class="wp-block-heading">7. Focus on&nbsp;benefits</h2>


<p>Though mentioned in passing in a few of the points previously, prioritizing benefits warrants its own item on this list. It can’t be overstated how important focusing on benefits of your product or service is — especially in contrast to just listing features.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Benefits explain how the features improve your customer’s life, solve their problems, or fulfill their needs. A list of features doesn’t do any of this, as it doesn’t offer the “why”. A benefits-focus, however, is compelling and relatable.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re stumped on where to begin with this, try translating each of your product or service’s features into a clear, user-centric benefit.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, instead of just stating &#8220;Our software has automated reporting&#8221;, you might say, &#8220;Save hours of manual work every week with our software&#8217;s automated reporting. This allows you to focus on the big picture&#8221;.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Emphasize your unique selling points, too. They should be framed as benefits that set your product apart from the competition. Why is your product the best choice?&nbsp;</p>



<p>For instance, if you sell solar panels, you might say, &#8220;Our solar panels are designed to withstand extreme weather conditions, providing reliable energy production year-round.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="8-include-video testimonials" class="wp-block-heading">8. Include video&nbsp;testimonials</h2>


<p>You can boost landing page conversion rates by incorporating video testimonials into your content as well. These videos act as social proof by showcasing real customers who have benefited from your product or service. When your claims can be backed up by real customers’ words, your USPs become much more convincing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You’ll need to use real customers in your video testimonials to provide authenticity and relatability. Genuine experiences from actual users are much more convincing than scripted or generic endorsements.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Encourage those who provide testimonials to be specific and results-oriented in their commentary. Did your product make their workflow more efficient? Did they save money? Be sure the benefits and outcomes are emphasized.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While the content of the testimonial is most important, good production quality can enhance the credibility and professionalism of the video as well. Good lighting, clear audio, and a stable camera setup never hurts.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.instrumentl.com/customers">Instrumentl</a>, a grant finding tool and non-profit, has a dedicated customer stories landing page with video testimonials prominently displayed.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="585" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-4.jpeg" alt="Instrumentl homepage" class="wp-image-284079" />


<h2 id="9-highlight-social-proof-to-build credibility" class="wp-block-heading">9. Highlight social proof to build&nbsp;credibility</h2>

<p>Video testimonials are an example of social proof, but there’s more to it than just that. Social proof offers a direct way to boost your landing page&#8217;s credibility and encourage conversions. It makes use of the influence of others to validate your product or service. This makes potential customers more likely to trust your brand because they’re hearing from past&nbsp;customers.</p>

<p>Customer testimonials provide first&#8209;hand accounts of users’ positive experiences with your company. Featuring quotes — written or video — can go a long way to encourage the&nbsp;sale.</p>

<p>In&#8209;depth case studies are another solid approach here. You can use them to showcase detailed examples of how your product or service has solved specific problems. These narratives often include before&#8209;and&#8209;after scenarios to demonstrate measurable results and concrete&nbsp;benefits.</p>

<h2 id="10-use-trust signals" class="wp-block-heading">10. Use trust&nbsp;signals</h2>


<p>Trust signals are little design elements or phrases you can add to your landing page that reassure visitors about the credibility and safety of your business.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can show trust badges and certifications from reputable organizations to further reassure site visitors of your credibility. Things like industry awards and memberships apply here, as do things like a badge stating you’re a <a href="https://www.bbb.org/get-accredited" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBB Accredited Business</a>.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Security badges from reputable organizations indicate that your website is safe and secure for transactions, too. Common examples include SSL certificates and <a href="https://www.trustedsite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TrustedSite</a>. Displaying these badges near forms and payment sections can add that bit of extra reassurance customers need to&nbsp;convert.</p>


<p>Other trust signals relate to how you do business. Offering a money-back guarantee can significantly reduce the perceived risk of purchasing your product or service. The same goes for posting clear and fair return and refund policies. Putting these in an accessible location indicates your company is customer-centric and willing to address any issues that arise post-purchase.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Displaying user reviews and ratings from third-party sites such as Google, Yelp, or industry-specific review platforms can add a layer of authenticity and trust, too.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can also display client and partner logos on your landing page to serve as quick endorsements.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Lastly, providing clear and accessible contact information, such as a phone number, email address, and physical address, can increase trust,&nbsp;too.</p>


<p><a href="https://www.cultureamp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Culture Amp</a> offers a solid example of many of these trust signals in action. They pack in many of them above-the-fold.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="713" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-5.jpeg" alt="CultureAmp homepage" class="wp-image-284080" />


<p>You can see past client logos, contact information, and ratings on reviews sites at a glance&nbsp;here.</p>

<h2 id="11-anticipate-and-address-common objections" class="wp-block-heading">11. Anticipate and address common&nbsp;objections</h2>


<p>Having a clear idea of where your potential customers are coming from and doing your best to mitigate their concerns can go a long way.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To begin, you’ll need to identify the most common objections your potential customers might have. This could include concerns about price, product effectiveness, ease of use, customer support, and return policies. You can reach out to people on social media to ask about their concerns directly to gather this information.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Then, you can create an FAQ section to answer the most common objections. That way, when a prospect lands on your site, they’ll have their questions answered without having to contact you. The less effort a potential customer has to put in to come to a purchasing decision, the&nbsp;better.</p>

<p>Providing clear pricing can help, too. There’s nothing worse for a customer than arriving at the checkout screen to realize hidden fees have been added to the purchase&nbsp;price.</p>

<h2 id="12-use-clear-calls-to-action cta" class="wp-block-heading">12. Use clear calls to action&nbsp;(CTA)</h2>


<p>A clear and compelling call-to-action is your landing page’s make-or-break moment. It’s the last bit people see before they decide to convert (or not).&nbsp;</p>



<p>To make the most of your final push to encourage prospects to become customers, be sure to use strong, action-oriented verbs that clearly tell visitors what they need to do. Phrases like &#8220;Get Started&#8221;, &#8220;Download Now&#8221;, &#8220;Sign Up Today&#8221;, and &#8220;Claim Your Free Trial&#8221; are direct and encourage immediate action.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can also incorporate a sense of urgency into your CTA to prompt visitors to act quickly. Phrases such as &#8220;Limited Time Offer&#8221;, &#8220;Only a Few Left&#8221;, or &#8220;Register Before It’s Too Late&#8221; can create a sense of scarcity and encourage immediate action.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Any CTA you present should stand out visually on the page. Use a contrasting color that draws attention and ensures the button doesn’t blend in with the rest of the content. Make it stand out.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And don’t be afraid to include supporting text around your CTA as well. Such text provides additional context and reassurance. For example, adding a short phrase like &#8220;No credit card required&#8221; or &#8220;Free for the first 30 days&#8221; can alleviate concerns <em>and</em> make the offer more enticing.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</a> offers a to-the-point CTA that’s upfront and hard to ignore.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="489" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-6.jpeg" alt="Dropbox page with big blue button" class="wp-image-284081" />



<p>The “Find your plan” button sounds non-committal but ultimately a great way to entice people to sign up.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="13-incorporate-directional cues" class="wp-block-heading">13. Incorporate directional&nbsp;cues</h2>


<p>Any visual element that guides a site visitor&#8217;s attention to critical parts of your landing page could be considered a directional cue. Often, you’ll find them pointing to key page elements like the CTA or a contact form.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Arrows are one of the most straightforward and effective directional cues. And by having them point to your CTA, you’re drawing the visitor’s eye to it and making it clear that’s where they should click next.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Similarly, lines or pathways can subtly guide the user&#8217;s gaze through the page as well. You want to lead them on a journey that ends with interacting with your CTA.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But arrows and lines aren’t the only directional cues you can use. Images of people qualify as well. Photos where the subject within is looking in the direction of your CTA is an effective choice, too. For instance, a photograph of a person looking toward a &#8220;Sign Up&#8221; button can direct people’s attention to that area.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="14-harness-urgency-and scarcity" class="wp-block-heading">14. Harness urgency and&nbsp;scarcity</h2>


<p>Another way to boost landing page conversion rates is by compelling visitors to act quickly. These psychological triggers leverage the fear of missing out (FOMO), which can be a powerful motivator.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can activate FOMO by making deals available for only a limited time. When a discount or promotion is available for a short period, people may be more likely to act immediately and complete the purchase. You can clearly display the time limit with countdown timers to make the deadline visible and tangible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Amazon does a good job of this, with their red “Limited time deal” flags on products available at a temporary discount.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="470" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-7.jpeg" alt="Amazon limited time deal red banner" class="wp-image-284082" />



<p>Including low stock notices on product pages leans into this sense of scarcity as well. Or, you could offer an exclusive deal to a subgroup of your customer base — like email subscribers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can further add to this sense of urgency and scarcity by adding real-time notifications to your site. These notifications will let customers know how many people are viewing a particular item — or how many of an item is still in stock.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="15-practice-risk reversal" class="wp-block-heading">15. Practice risk&nbsp;reversal</h2>


<p>Risk reversal plays into the trust signals discussed previously, but it warrants its own callout here. This tactic involves offering guarantees or assurances that reduce the perceived risk for potential customers.&nbsp;</p>


<p>The best example of risk reversal in action is offering a money&#8209;back guarantee. This offer assures customers that if they are not satisfied with the product or service, they can get a full refund. And when implemented clearly and well, this can reduce purchase hesitation. State the terms of this guarantee upfront and prominently, such as &#8220;30&#8209;day money&#8209;back guarantee&#8221; or &#8220;Satisfaction guaranteed or your money&nbsp;back&#8221;.​</p>

<p>The same goes for free trials. This offer lets customers try your product or service before committing to a purchase. This is usually a great choice for software products, subscription services, and digital products. To promote this, you might say, &#8220;14&#8209;day free trial with no credit card&nbsp;required.&#8221;</p>

<p>Along with a money&#8209;back guarantee and a free trial, you could also provide a hassle&#8209;free return and exchange policy as well as warranties, when&nbsp;applicable.</p>


<p><a href="https://www.warbyparker.com">Warby Parker</a> has an impressive free trial offer — you can test out five different eye-glasses frames at home without spending a penny.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="650" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-2.png" alt="Warby Parker landing page" class="wp-image-284083" />



<p>This offer is mentioned above the fold on the homepage, making it tempting to new customers.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="16-make-sure-your-pages-are-responsive-and-mobile optimized" class="wp-block-heading">16. Make sure your pages are responsive and mobile&nbsp;optimized</h2>


<p>It might sound like a small thing, as it’s an expected part of web design nowadays, but ensuring your landing page is responsive and mobile-optimized is a must, too. Offering a seamless mobile experience for prospective customers improves UX and engagement, which means more conversions for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>On mobile devices, your site should prioritize a clean and straightforward menu structure that’s accessible. A common approach is the &#8220;hamburger&#8221; menu, which expands when tapped. Ensure that key elements like your CTA are prominently displayed and easily accessible without requiring excessive scrolling​, too.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Keep links touch-friendly, too. And before you launch your landing page, be sure to test it across multiple devices and screen sizes.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 id="17-ensure-your-site-loads-quickly " class="wp-block-heading">17. Ensure your site loads quickly&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Paying attention to loading speeds can help keep your landing page conversion-ready. Pages that are too slow to load can cause visitors to get frustrated and bounce.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Knowing this, following best practices for improving site speed is imperative. You’ll want to pay attention to things like compressing images, making use of browser caching, and minimizing HTTP requests. You’ll also need to minify your code and use a CDN to reduce overall latency at the server level. Tools like <a href="https://pagespeed.web.dev/">Google PageSpeed Insights</a> can help you identify and address&nbsp;issues.</p>

<h2 id="18-consider-color psychology" class="wp-block-heading">18. Consider color&nbsp;psychology</h2>


<p>Another way you can improve your landing page conversion rate is by using color psychology. This is a time-honored approach in marketing that can help you effectively influence visitors&#8217; emotions and actions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>According to <a href="https://www.oberlo.com/blog/color-psychology-color-meanings">Oberlo</a>, here are some colors and their typical psychological associations. This information could help you get a handle on how your color choices can influence the ways customers feel (and act):&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><strong>Red</strong> creates urgency and excitement. It’s a good color for CTA buttons and limited&#8209;time&nbsp;offers.</li>

<li><strong>Blue </strong>conveys trust and calmness. This is great for finance, healthcare, and technology&nbsp;brands.</li>

<li><strong>Green</strong> is associated with growth and harmony. Green is suitable for environmental products and health&nbsp;brands.</li>

<li><strong>Yellow</strong> makes people feel optimistic. It’s effective as an accent color to highlight important&nbsp;information.</li>

<li><strong>Orange</strong> conveys a sense of confidence. This is good for CTA buttons and&nbsp;banners.</li>

<li><strong>Purple</strong> represents luxury and creativity. Purple is ideal for high&#8209;end and innovative&nbsp;products.</li>

<li><strong>Black</strong> conveys sophistication. Black is often used for luxury brands as&nbsp;well.</li>

<li><strong>White</strong> symbolizes simplicity. It’s great for backgrounds to create space and&nbsp;clarity.</li></ul>


<p>You’ll want to make use of contrasting colors to make important elements like CTA buttons stand out as&nbsp;well.</p>

<h2 id="19-offer comparisons" class="wp-block-heading">19. Offer&nbsp;comparisons</h2>

<p>If you are confident in your product or service’s ability to outperform the competition, offering direct comparisons can be a solid selling point. And in doing so, you can highlight your unique advantages and convince potential customers to choose&nbsp;you.</p>

<p>While you can simply write up comparisons as body copy, a comparison table can be helpful for those skimming through your landing page for pertinent information. In it, you’ll want to list features, pricing, benefits, and other relevant factors side by side to make it simple for visitors to see where you excel. Ensure that the table is clear, concise, and legible,&nbsp;too.​</p>


<p>Be honest in your comparisons, however. Highlighting your strengths is essential, but avoid misrepresenting or downplaying competitors if your statements are false.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="20-promote-lead magnets" class="wp-block-heading">20. Promote lead&nbsp;magnets</h2>


<p>Offering a lead magnet is another great way to attract attention and convert prospects into customers. Lead magnets are valuable resources offered for free to visitors in exchange for their contact information, typically an email address.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Offering any old piece of content for free won’t do, however. A successful lead magnet addresses a specific problem or offers a solution that your audience finds valuable. So long as it achieves this goal, the type of content you offer could be pretty much anything. Popular types of lead magnets include things like eBooks, checklists, access to webinars or workshops, templates, or even free samples.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1600" height="765" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-3.png" alt="WPVIP form with a lead capture" class="wp-image-284084" />



<p>WordPress VIP, in exchange for filling out a simple form, offers a 2024 report on how content drives growth. This is a great lead magnet, as it’s directly applicable to the types of enterprise businesses that might use their services.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="21-be-consistent-in-design-and message" class="wp-block-heading">21. Be consistent in design and&nbsp;message</h2>


<p>No matter your industry, presenting a consistent design and message is another key component for successful landing pages. A clear and consistent brand conveys trust helps with recall..&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s convenient to say “be consistent” but the truth is, you need to approach the design and message with a clear plan — from the start. That means developing comprehensive brand guidelines that outline your brand’s visual and verbal identity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>These guidelines should include things like how and when your logo should be used (including size, spacing, and color variations), your site’s color palette, the typography used, the types of images (illustrations or photos), and the tone of voice of your content. Once you have these guidelines in place, you can make sure your content adheres to them.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://stripe.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stripe</a> does a good job of this on its website.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="1200" height="688" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-8.jpeg" alt="Stripe landing page with a colorful background" class="wp-image-284085" />


<p>It prioritizes purple and blue colors, dynamic animations, and a confident&nbsp;voice.</p>

<h2 id="22-make-accessibility-a priority" class="wp-block-heading">22. Make accessibility a&nbsp;priority</h2>


<p>You’ll also want to ensure your landing page is accessible to people with disabilities. This isn’t just a legal requirement, but also an essential part of reaching everyone with an optimal user experience.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There are a few ways to ensure accessibility, including the use of semantic HTML, which provides meaningful markup that helps screen readers and other assistive technologies understand the structure of your content.&nbsp;</p>


<p>You’ll also need to provide text alternatives for images, videos, and audio files. Use alt attributes for images to describe their content. For complex images like charts, provide a detailed description in the surrounding text. And transcribing video and audio content (and offering closed captions for videos)​ goes a long way,&nbsp;too.</p>

<p>Following the <a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Web Content Accessibility Guidelines</a> is your best bet for making sure you cover all aspects of web accessibility, from ARIA landmarks to keyboard&nbsp;accessibility</p>

<h2 id="23-offer-live-chat-for-personalized assistance" class="wp-block-heading">23. Offer live chat for personalized&nbsp;assistance</h2>


<p>One way to really make your landing page stand out is to offer live chat. Providing real-time, personalized assistance makes it so you’re addressing customer questions the moment they arise. You can resolve issues and guide visitors through the decision-making process immediately. When you provide timely help like this, you’ll boost conversions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can also use proactive chat invitations to engage visitors who may need assistance but haven’t initiated a chat yet. For example, if someone spends a decent chunk of time on a product page or is about to exit, a chat popup can appear asking if they need help.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For instance, if you have a WordPress site, a WooCommerce extension like <a href="https://woocommerce.com/products/livechat/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LiveChat for WooCommerce</a> can help you field customer questions in real time in a way that’s integrated with your broader store.&nbsp;</p>


<h2 id="24-ab test" class="wp-block-heading">24. A/B&nbsp;test</h2>


<p>The last recommended tactic for improving your landing page conversion rate is to A/B test everything. Split testing involves comparing two versions of your landing page, each with a single element slightly different, to determine which one performs better.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Common elements to prioritize in A/B testing include headlines, CTA buttons, image choices, color schemes, copy, and layout variations.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With your element selected, you can then create two or more variations of the element you want to test. For instance, if you are testing headlines, write multiple versions that highlight different benefits or use different tones. Then, compare them over a set period of time. The one that encourages a better conversion rate is the winner. Then you can move on to test a different element.&nbsp;</p>


<p>To run a test like this, you’ll need to split your website traffic. There are tons of tools out there to facilitate this, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.optimizely.com">Optimizely</a>.</p>

<h2 id="frequently-asked questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently asked&nbsp;questions</h2>


<p>Now that we’ve explored multiple ways to optimize your landing pages and improve their conversion rates, take some time to browse through some frequently asked questions about this process.&nbsp;</p>


<h3 id="what-are-the-common-mistakes-to-avoid-when-designing-a-landing page" class="wp-block-heading">What are the common mistakes to avoid when designing a landing&nbsp;page?</h3>

<p>Common mistakes to avoid when designing a landing page include a cluttered design, an unclear CTA, slow loading times, a lack of mobile optimization, and not addressing visitor pain points. You’ll need to speak directly to your target audience and provide an accessible and user&#8209;friendly on&#8209;site experience to see improved conversion&nbsp;rates.</p>

<h3 id="what-is-a-good-conversion-rate-for-a-landing page" class="wp-block-heading">What is a good conversion rate for a landing&nbsp;page?</h3>

<p>A good conversion rate varies by industry. But for landing pages in general, a good conversion rate is 2&#8209;5%. However, top&#8209;performing landing pages can achieve conversion rates of 10% or higher​, especially if the industry is very&nbsp;specific.</p>

<h3 id="should-i-use-captcha-to-protect-my-form-from spam" class="wp-block-heading">Should I use CAPTCHA to protect my form from&nbsp;spam?</h3>

<p>While CAPTCHA can prevent spam, it can also deter genuine site visitors from converting. So, no, you shouldn’t use CAPTCHA and should opt for an alternative like Akismet. This <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/captcha-alternatives/">anti&#8209;spam alternative to CAPTCHA</a> offers effective spam protection without compromising the user&nbsp;experience.</p>

<h3 id="what-is-akismet-and-how-can-it-improve-my-lead-generation-form-conversion rate" class="wp-block-heading">What is Akismet, and how can it improve my lead generation form conversion&nbsp;rate?</h3>

<p>Akismet is a powerful spam&#8209;filtering service that automatically detects and <a href="https://akismet.com/features/">blocks spam submissions</a>. And it doesn’t rely on CAPTCHA to do it. This means users have fewer steps to complete forms, thus improving conversion rates without leading to an increase in&nbsp;spam.</p>

<h3 id="what-types-of-companies-generally-use akismet" class="wp-block-heading">What types of companies generally use&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>

<p>Akismet is trusted by over 100 million sites, including enterprise brands like Microsoft, <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/">ConvertKit</a>, and Bluehost. Akismet provides effective spam protection that doesn’t impede on lead generation efforts, offering a win&#8209;win scenario for companies of all&nbsp;sizes.</p>

<h3 id="how-often-should-i-update-or-tweak-my-landing-page-for-optimal performance" class="wp-block-heading">How often should I update or tweak my landing page for optimal&nbsp;performance?</h3>


<p>You should update or tweak your landing page on a regular basis. Aim to review and make changes to your landing page at least quarterly, or more frequently if you notice a drop in performance metrics or significant changes in user behavior. Keeping an eye on metrics and conducting regular A/B tests can help mitigate sudden increases in bounce rate.&nbsp;</p>


<h3 id="what-is-a-lead-magnet-and-how-can-it-boost-my-landing-page conversions" class="wp-block-heading">What is a lead magnet, and how can it boost my landing page&nbsp;conversions?</h3>


<p>A lead magnet is a valuable resource offered for free in exchange for contact information. Popular types of lead magnets include eBooks, checklists, and reports. The most effective lead magnets attract and convert visitors by providing immediate value. This then inserts the prospect into your sales funnel, which means they’re primed and ready to make a purchase later.&nbsp;</p>


<h3 id="what-are-the-key-metrics-to-track-when-analyzing-landing-page performance" class="wp-block-heading">What are the key metrics to track when analyzing landing page&nbsp;performance?</h3>


<p>When tracking and analyzing landing page performance, you should keep an eye on its conversion rate, bounce rate, average time on page, click-through rate (CTR), and cost per conversion. Tracking these metrics helps identify areas for improvement and measure the effectiveness of the optimizations you make.&nbsp;</p>


<h3 id="what-are-some-common-mistakes-to-avoid-when-optimizing-a-landing page" class="wp-block-heading">What are some common mistakes to avoid when optimizing a landing&nbsp;page?</h3>


<p>When optimizing a landing page, you’ll want to avoid common mistakes like making too many changes at once, which makes it impossible to see how individual changes are affecting performance.&nbsp;</p>


<p>Another mistake is ignoring mobile visitors. Any landing page created in 2024 should be optimized for mobile interaction by default. Also, not aligning the page with user intent or addressing customer pain points are big&nbsp;issues.</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, 31 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +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:11:"Jen Swisher";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:99:"Do The Woo Community: Bridging Art and Blockchain, Bringing Certification to Woo with Robert Norton";s: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=84943";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://dothewoo.io/bridging-art-and-blockchain-bringing-certification-to-woo-with-robert-norton/";s: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:38909:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-19 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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Episode Transcript
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<p>Dave:<br />Welcome to this episode of Do the Woo. We&#8217;re talking Emerging Tech, and today we&#8217;re talking with Robert Norton from Verisart. Hi Robert, how are you doing?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Good. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />No worries. And I should probably say I&#8217;m your host, Dave Lockie as well. So I guess a bit about you, Robert. You&#8217;re the CEO and founder of Verisart. What came before that and what&#8217;s your journey been like as an entrepreneur?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />For the last 15 years, I found myself at the intersection of art and tech. Prior to Verisart, which is a platform that started doing blockchain certification for the art and collectibles market, I was running a company called Sedition Art, which was, in a way, one of the first platforms that sold digital limited editions by well-known artists. Now, of course, we come to know digital limited editions as non-fungible tokens and NFTs, which I know we&#8217;re going to get into later. But it was my time at Sedition between 2010 to 2013 that really got me thinking about how artists can find new audiences in other mediums. The principal medium of most of the artists we worked with at Sedition was physical, not digital. Prior to that, I was the founder and CEO of Saatchi Art, previously known as Saatchi Online. We turned it into an e-commerce enabled platform where artists who didn&#8217;t have any gallery representation could have a platform to show their work and sell directly to consumers. So, we did a lot of that heavy lifting for them. In some ways, it&#8217;s analogous perhaps to Etsy, but with more focus on independent working artists.</p>



<p>I guess why did I end up in this sort of strange intersection? Probably because, in the back of my mind, I wanted to do something in the art world. Both my parents did art degrees, my grandfather was a restorer, so I grew up in a household where the idea of unauthorized or authorized reproductions was quite prevalent. You&#8217;d often see, in the case of 19th-century works, studios like Joshua Reynolds would have many works of the same coming from the studio, some of which just worked on by his studio, some of which he worked on in parts, and some of which he worked on entirely. This area of multiples was really interesting to me. The aha moment with Verisart was looking at the case of the Knoedler Gallery, which came to the press around 2015. One of the oldest galleries in New York was found guilty of selling fake Rothkos, a well-known post-war artist in the states, selling these works by the dozen in modern times, in 2015. It wasn&#8217;t just unwitting people that should know better, but people like the chairman of Sotheby&#8217;s themselves. I was thinking this is a real problem when you have such trust in authorities that are clearly not able to be trusted. I thought about how to improve trust with the advent of distributed ledger technology. We&#8217;ve been tackling that problem now for almost 10 years.</p>



<p>To give you a little insight before that, I started my career back in &#8217;95 at America Online, initially in business development, then running e-commerce, and then did a bunch of startups from health to games. I was the person that launched King.com in North America. So, I was the first managing director for King.com in North America. My whole career has been in consumer-facing e-commerce, as I would describe it. While we&#8217;re not a marketplace at Verisart, we do help people with their drops and their releases. We&#8217;ve now started offering a token gate app print service, which takes us closer to revenue-generating opportunities for artists as well.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Amazing. What strikes me about your founding story is that this was not just a love of art, but a very personal relationship with art. It was all around you, with artists and with people who were trying to make a living with art, the artists themselves, the people around that industry, the restorers, the galleries, the marketplaces. This is obviously a very deeply connected and personal mission for you.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I think Steve Jobs said, you can connect the dots looking backwards, but you don&#8217;t necessarily connect them moving forwards. I didn&#8217;t necessarily feel it as personally, but now I think it makes sense. My wife also has a gallery that we work with, and I met my wife through my interest in art. So, I guess we&#8217;re very much an art family at this point. But really, it was the advent of blockchain technology that inspired me to do this business. One of the artists we worked with at my former company, Sedition Art, is Casey Reas. Casey is also the co-inventor, along with Ben Fry, of a language called Processing, which enabled artists to generate their digital art with a rules-based programming language. It was Casey who wrote to me in 2014 and said, &#8220;Hey Robert, looking at what you&#8217;re doing at Saatchi Online and Sedition Art, I think this technology has real potential for certification of verification purposes, both for physical and digital art.&#8221; That got me thinking about how blockchains work, mechanisms to trust a timeline, and commitments to that timeline. It felt like a good application for some of the problems we were facing with our provenance certification. In a nutshell, we were taking the certificate, typically issued by some sort of authority, maybe an estate, studio, or gallery, and the provenance, which is another fancy word for the story—the agreed story around the history of that object. That may include exhibition literature as well. We were taking the registry—who&#8217;s ultimately responsible—and binding the certificate, provenance, and registry together by shared distributed ledger technology standards. I think it makes for a stronger provenance. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve been doing at Verisart.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Yeah, really interesting. Maybe you could talk to us about what that journey&#8217;s looked like. Has it been one with a lot of pivoting, large or small, or has it been more a case of feeling like you&#8217;ve got the right solution, but the job is to educate, make aware, and onboard? How would you describe that 10 years?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Ten years ago, a small percentage of households owned crypto, and now we&#8217;re well into double digits, depending on certain age groups. I think it&#8217;s up to 40% in some age groups. As a whole, it&#8217;s about 20% or so of households in the US that now own crypto in one form or another. We&#8217;ve come a long way, and sometimes people talk about the number of households that own crypto paralleling the growth in the number of households that went online in the early days of internet service providers and online services. Whether those correlate correctly, the point is that we&#8217;ve grown from a very small base to something that feels closer to mainstream, although it&#8217;s not yet at mainstream levels of adoption. We&#8217;re not past a 50% threshold in most markets, except for a few perhaps like El Salvador, where Bitcoin&#8217;s become an alternative national currency.</p>



<p>If I could characterize what it was like in 2014, I was at this Scaling Bitcoin conference at Stanford University. There were literally probably about 200 people in the community that then went on to build aspects of the blockchain infrastructure we&#8217;re familiar with today. That was probably the size of the industry for well-known players at that point. It was very small, and even at conferences, you would struggle to get more than a thousand people to show up. Now we&#8217;ve got huge conferences from DeFi to NFTs to staking, to wallet providers, new L1s, which is layer one blockchains, new roll-ups, and L2s. The industry has really evolved. Back in 2014, 2015, I spent most of my time explaining what a blockchain was and why the words art and blockchain were in the same sentence. Now, because of the NFT boom and bust we witnessed in 2021, no one really questions why the words art and blockchain go together.</p>



<p>We&#8217;ve come a long way in terms of people&#8217;s understanding of what this technology can do, but we&#8217;re still set back by the early years in terms of the bad actors in the space. We&#8217;ve seen arrests of the principals of FTX and Binance, and bad actors erode consumer trust. That&#8217;s very unhelpful when you&#8217;re trying to bring new technologies to market. In some ways, it was like two steps forward, one step back, but we&#8217;ve really come a long way over the last 10 years. As a result, we can start focusing more on the applications and less on explaining what&#8217;s beneath the hood.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />And I think because there&#8217;s such a visual representation—maybe the only visual representation of crypto technology that most people can find—it has that artistic element to it. There have been a lot of bad actors, and the worlds where art and finance meet are often murky and gray anyway. When you accelerate that with the petrol of the internet, there have been a lot of problematic NFT projects. I can imagine that&#8217;s been particularly challenging for you. You&#8217;re certainly right, there are lots of data points, but the trend line is increasing adoption, increasing awareness. Now you mentioned this idea about mainstream, and one of the conversations I hear in crypto is that crypto will be mainstream when people are using it without knowing that it&#8217;s crypto. I noticed that at Verisart you take a very deliberately technology-inclusive approach to describing what you do. How often do you find yourself in a situation where you&#8217;re trying to explain Verisart to somebody who is utterly naive and ignorant to crypto and blockchain? Do you ever find success in converting those merchants or artists, or is this always a more progressive and educational sell where they have to get some foundations before they can see the value in what you do?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />We&#8217;ve got a good history of working with artists, and we were one of the first external curators on SuperRare, which is a well-known premium platform for unique digital artwork. So one-of-ones is what they&#8217;re often referred to</p>



<p>. Back in 2021, because of my time at Sedition, where we worked with many well-known artists from Damien Hirst to Bill Viola to Tracey Emin and Shepard Fairey, Christian Boltanski, Yoko Ono, we probably worked with a hundred of the world&#8217;s top contemporary artists during my time at Sedition. It&#8217;s still continuing to this day. That experience of speaking to an artist and understanding what they want to release as a digital edition, can we help them, have they got the facilities to do it in-house themselves—this discussion was more complex during the NFT boom and bust because there were things like needing a wallet, a smart contract, and deciding under which smart contract to mint. But we were able to have those discussions because we understood the issues ourselves. We&#8217;ve done a huge number of inaugural artists&#8217; NFTs. Whether it&#8217;s Roe Ethridge, William Wegman, Shepard Fairey, Petra Cortright, or Neil Beloufa, a lot of well-known artists&#8217; inaugural NFTs. They came to us because they were somewhat confused by this landscape and they wanted somebody they could trust to guide them through the process. We did two drops with SuperRare, 10 by 10 and 8 by 8, focused on inaugural artists&#8217; NFTs. We also did Artsy&#8217;s first NFT drop in early 2022, which included 22 artists. So, we&#8217;re absolutely in the business of handholding.</p>



<p>When it comes to looking for our audience and the actual users of our service—the SaaS users or the people that are subscribed to our software—we&#8217;ve found it&#8217;s very hard work dragging someone along to the drinking trough. It&#8217;s better if they&#8217;re already there by the waterside and you can perhaps help them more effectively. We&#8217;re not so much in the business of telling people they need to use blockchain technology, but more in the business of explaining how we can provide a good service for people who are already looking in that area.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. As a small business, you have to focus on what&#8217;s achievable within your resources and timescales. I&#8217;m sure a lot of the awareness work you&#8217;re doing is going to have a knock-on effect further down into the future, but you certainly have to be judicious with the way you&#8217;re putting that target of energy. One thing I think about quite a lot, and this is with NFTs generally, not just art-based NFTs—of course, there&#8217;s some philosophical conversation about what is and isn&#8217;t art—whenever you use a new medium or format for art, it brings new constraints and opportunities creatively. With digital, it allowed for, for example, algorithmic generative art. However, then when you take digital art and put it on-chain, that also changes the format and the medium. What I&#8217;m thinking about here is the public nature of interaction with that art—who minted it, who collected it, has it been sold on secondary, what&#8217;s the price trend, all of that. My question is, to what extent is that interesting and exciting and offering new opportunities to artists where they may have had glimpses of that historically, seeing their art for sale or auction or whatever, but now they have this opportunity to be directly in communication with people that hold their art because if you both have wallets, there are plenty of ways to contact each other.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />There&#8217;s a lot to unpack there. The first is, obviously, art is now as easily tradable an asset as an NFT, as the fungible token—Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, or Tezos. These chains are in the business of minting coins and having people speculate on the value of those coins and the value those networks will accumulate. Remember, they all sit within the same type of wallets. That was never the case with art before. You had a painting, it may have been an asset, but it didn&#8217;t sit within your bank account, and you could trade it like you could trade pounds, dollars, or euros. You&#8217;re absolutely right to bring that up first. What the blockchain did, and particularly NFTs, is it basically meant that all the digital art released as NFTs were now effectively like financial instruments. That&#8217;s why you suddenly saw crazy amounts of speculation and wash trading, and activities that created these elevated floor prices for works that were sold or given away. The use of CryptoPunks or Bored Apes in these 10K drops became the symbol of the height of the market, where algorithms were spinning out 10,000 different variations of a theme. They were sorted by traits—certain rare backgrounds, shapes on their heads, laser eyes, etc. Artists started to use traits around art, and it became very confusing for a lot of people to determine what is art and what is just PFP—a personal profile picture. Some of these also became very valuable assets like the Punks and Apes.</p>



<p>I think that&#8217;s all now beginning to shake out. The challenges for artists probably outweigh the opportunities because artists get exhausted by having to maintain a constant dialogue with their community. The community can turn on them if the financial returns go down. It puts a lot of pressure and stress on the artists. Traditionally, artists have had dealers to remove some of their need to be there talking to their collectors. Healthy, protective art communities exist. The Art Blocks community, which we work with closely, and the generative art community are small and protective of one another. That&#8217;s a good example of a healthier discourse, but it&#8217;s not completely removed from those who just want to speculate on digital art as an asset and feel disappointed when prices don&#8217;t go their way.</p>



<p>The first thing is that art is now more of a tradable instrument than it was. It attracts speculators, and speculators outweigh collectors. We&#8217;ve seen that with the rise of marketplaces that don&#8217;t enforce artist royalties. That&#8217;s symptomatic of more speculators than collectors still in the market. We&#8217;re currently doing a show at Gazelli Art House called &#8220;Awaken and Metamagical Hands,&#8221; which includes pioneers like John Maeda, Golan Levin, Joshua Davis, and Leah, as well as younger artists like Robbie Barrat and Lauren Lee McCarthy. All these artists could have solo shows themselves, but they&#8217;re still trying to understand the role of algorithms in their relationship to others or even to themselves. Lauren Lee McCarthy, a professor at UCLA and the Design Media and Arts lab along with Casey Reas, has created an installation called &#8220;Saliva Exchange,&#8221; where people can come in and spit in a vial, write a few things about their saliva, and share it with someone else. It&#8217;s a conceptual piece addressing questions around the way algorithms are based in life and how that changes our interactions and notions of modern-day intimacy.</p>



<p>Different artists are exploring different digital trends—some using midjourney or OpenAI algorithms for generative video and art, others building their own software, and others focusing on conceptual fields. It&#8217;s an interesting time. However, the principal responsibility of an artist is to create art, not to pump their communities. Those artists who shot to fame by pumping their communities may not be the ones that last from a museum or historical standpoint.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Yeah, interesting. Digital and blockchain art has been extremely disruptive, and that disruption continues. There are some emerging trends—very art-focused communities that are positive and nurturing, and people pushing the boundaries of generative and on-chain art. There&#8217;s still a lot more emergence to happen. Let&#8217;s switch gears a bit. We&#8217;ve mainly talked about art and blockchain so far. I&#8217;d like to bring this back down to earth for a Woo audience. We may have merchants listening who are selling art or interested in how they can use NFTs to enhance what they&#8217;re doing with e-commerce. We almost certainly have agency folks who would love to get their teams working with some of these technologies. They&#8217;re thinking about which of their clients might want to use this technology, what success looks like, etc. We talked about art being wrapped in these digital tokens. Digital assets are tokenized and put into common digital wallets. This extends to real-world assets as well—cases of wine, physical artwork, fractions of an old Mercedes, etc. If you&#8217;re just issuing NFTs and transacting on-chain, you don&#8217;t need a traditional e-commerce setup because you can do this through marketplaces. The whole idea is that you don&#8217;t need fulfillment because it&#8217;s all digital. You don&#8217;t need a traditional payment processor and checkout because it&#8217;s all based on wallet signatures and digital asset transfers. Yet, there is a lot of e-commerce happening where you do need e-commerce—you need to take delivery, accept orders, worry about tax and payments, and everything else. Where do those two worlds intersect? What does a merchant or a success story look like where you get those two things? Verisart operates in both purely digital and intersectional worlds through integrations with WooCommerce and Shopify.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It&#8217;s super helpful when the certification is happening at the time of sale because otherwise, if you&#8217;re creating certificates on Verisart.com and doing your sale through some other mechanism, there&#8217;s always going to be a lag between the sale, the invoice happening on some platform—whether it&#8217;s your own, a third-party marketplace, or offline. We&#8217;ve always felt it&#8217;s helpful to close that gap in time for the certification at the time of transaction. With NFTs, you can mint and list the NFT later, but mostly people mint and sell the NFT at the same time. In the early years of Verisart, when we didn&#8217;t have any e-commerce integrations, people used us, but we didn&#8217;t see enough transfers of the certificates. We wanted to make that easier for people. About five years ago, we did our first app with Shopify. We&#8217;re super happy to have launched our WooCommerce app this year. We&#8217;ve learned a lot from our time on the other marketplace platform in terms of building a good app from day one with the WooCommerce audience. Our app allows people to certify products, whether physical or digital. We support minting NFTs or tokens. One thing we don&#8217;t support is fractions of an object because once you start offering fractions, you&#8217;re into the world of securities regulation, which we stay well clear of. Also, fractionalizing an artwork isn&#8217;t necessarily where there&#8217;s real demand for fractionalized opportunities. Fractionalizing businesses that provide you a yield or return that can be valued is more of an obvious first spot than fractionalizing an artwork because there often isn&#8217;t consensus around the price for unique artworks.</p>



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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




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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rlnorton/">Robert on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 31 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:83:"Do The Woo Community: Onboarding for Freelance and Shop Owners with Laura Elizabeth";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84932";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"https://dothewoo.io/onboarding-for-freelance-and-shop-owners-with-laura-elizabeth/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54596:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-26 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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<img width="525" height="525" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Airwallex.jpg?resize=525%2C525&ssl=1" alt="Airwallex" class="wp-image-80258" />
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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-container-content-10"><strong><a href="https://www.airwallex.com/integrations/woocommerce?utm_source=701Nn000009vJ0mIAE">Airwallex</a></strong>: With <strong>Airwallex</strong> merchants are no longer forced to convert their foreign incoming payments into their home market currencies and they can use the funds to pay suppliers internationally.</p>
</div>
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<img width="500" height="500" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Omnisend-square.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-78802" />
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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-container-content-12"><strong><a href="https://your.omnisend.com/onlywoo_dothewoo">Omnisend</a></strong>: Whether it&#8217;s for integration into your Woo product, or building sites for clients, <strong>Omnisend</strong> is the solution for email and SMS marketing with their CRM solution for WooCommerce shops and your own website.</p>
</div>
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Katie:<br />Hello and welcome to Biz Chat at Do the Woo. I&#8217;m Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins, and today we&#8217;re going to be talking about onboarding, whether you are a freelancer wanting to improve the onboarding for new clients or whether you are an e-commerce store owner, needing to onboard customers who buy your products. To help us with this, we&#8217;ve got special guest Laura Elizabeth. Welcome, Laura.</p>



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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