WordPress Planet

March 28, 2024

WordCamp Central: From WordCamps to NextGen Events: Uganda’s Turn to Pilot Innovative WordPress Events is Here!

Iganga (Girls) Secondary School  Students present a WordPress project during WordCamp Jinja - Uganda 5th Sept 2023

Iganga (Girls) Secondary School Students present a WordPress project during WordCamp Jinja – Uganda 5th Sept 2023

In May 2023, the global WordPress community embarked on an exciting new venture called the “Next Generation WordPress Events” pilot project. This initiative was designed to break the mold of traditional WordCamps and meetups, introducing innovative event formats that cater to a wider audience and foster a fresh engagement within the community. As the year unfolded, various countries trialed these novel events, each contributing uniquely to the vibrant tapestry of the WordPress ecosystem.

Now, WordPress Meetup Chapters in Uganda are stepping into the spotlight to pilot the NextGen WordPress events formats, marking a significant milestone in the country’s tech community. These upcoming events, including the WordPress in Education Showcase 2024 and the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024, are not just gatherings but a celebration of innovation, creativity, and the future of web development in Uganda.

The WordPress in Education Showcase 2024, set to take place at the Masaka Social Center on April 6th, is dedicated to uncovering the potential of WordPress in education. This event will shine a light on the extraordinary projects developed by secondary school students, ranging from dynamic websites to interactive educational tools, showcasing the immense talent and creativity of Uganda’s youth.

Following this will be the Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 on July 5th, 2024 at the National ICT Innovation Hub in Nakawa, Kampala. Under the theme, Problem Solving with WordPress, high school & university students will pitch website projects, addressing real-world challenges, to a panel of adjudicators who will provide feedback and select winners for in-kind awards and cash prizes.

These pioneering events represent more than just the evolution of WordPress gatherings in Uganda; they signify a commitment to advancing the digital landscape and fostering a new generation of WordPress users and developers. By embracing innovative formats and focusing on content that resonates with specific audiences, Uganda is setting a new standard for WordPress events globally.

As Uganda takes this bold step with the WordPress in Education Technology Showcase and the Uganda Website Projects Competition, an invitation is extended to all students, educators, tech enthusiasts, and professionals to join in this transformative journey. These events are catalysts for change, providing a platform for innovation, learning, and community building.

For those keen to explore more about these and other upcoming NextGen events and WordCamps in Uganda, including the Online Payments and Delivery Summit, WordCamp Jinja and WordCamp Lira, be sure to check out the WordCamp Central schedule at WordCamp Central.

Join us as we embark on this exciting new chapter in the WordPress community. The future is here, and it’s brimming with possibilities.

by Mukalele Rogers at March 28, 2024 11:03 AM under Uganda

March 27, 2024

Do The Woo Community: From Woo Specialists to Full-Sevice Ecommerce Agency with Cody Landefeld

In today’s Woo AgencyChat, host Robert Jacobi chats with Cody Landefeld from Mode Effect.

In the conversation, Cody discusses the evolution of Mode Effect from a WooCommerce-focused company to a full-service ecommerce agency, offering technical and marketing support to e-commerce stores.

He emphasizes the importance of treating customers well and investing in the team for the growth of an agency.

On the technical side of things, Cody also shares the significance of understanding Google Analytics, leveraging email automation, and using tools like Active Campaign and High Level for cart abandonment.

He does add a warning against relying solely on social media platforms for business and encourages store owners to become subject matter experts in what they’re selling.

Looking into the future, Cody predicts that AI will play a significant role in online shopping, with devices becoming more accessible and socially acceptable.


Show Transcript

Robert:
Hi, and welcome to another Woo AgencyChat. This is Robert Jacobi, missing the wonderful Robbie Adair today. But we do have Cody Landefeld from Mode Effect as our guest. This is really exciting. We’re all in Phoenix in separate rooms, in separate hotels and locations in the weird, small wildness of what’s WordPress and agency life and all that. How are you doing, Cody?

Cody:
I’m doing fine. How are you doing?

Robert:
Excellent. I’m enjoying. Well, it’s pretty much the same weather as is back in Chicago, so weird weather this year. Let’s run crazy. Let’s get a good rundown of Mode Effect and what you have been up to you and your team in the WooCommerce space.

Cody:
Yeah, well, I mean the mission really is just to serve our clients as best we can. And when I say clients, I mean e-commerce stores ranging from two to $10 million kind of in that sweet spot for us. We help folks with just helping them on the technical side, marketing side, just really a holistic approach to serving them and helping their stores thrive and do well. And me personally, I just have been sort of heads down with making sure that we have a good team that’s well prepared to be able to serve our clients, and also just making sure that we have all of the well run resources and client support and whatnot. I wear a lot of hats, so I’m certain with clients and all that fun stuff.

Robert:
So is this, because I’ve known you and Mode Effect for a while where it was we’re a WooCommerce development firm, is this full agency thing sort, not necessarily brand new, but an outgrowth of first starting out very focused on WooCommerce?

Cody:
Yeah, so going back to about 2017, 2018, we primarily were fully in the WordPress WooCommerce space. That’s all we did everything in PHP. And then I met my partner John Morrison in about 2017 in that timeframe. And he was actually a competitor of mine. And he ran a shop that primarily did a esp.net, storefront.net e-commerce CMS system, whatnot. And he was starting to compete with me in the WooCommerce space. And what had happened was we became aware of each other, started talking and then started collaborating a little bit on some projects because while he had a strong senior team on the net side, the staffing of the WooCommerce side was a little bit of a challenge, whereas we had been in that market and that game for quite a while. So we sort of joined forces organically and started to see a real opportunity for us to partner up.
And then that became a journey of just, I’d say about three, four years of running alongside each other. And then in 2020 we merged our companies, which was at the time Morrison Consulting. And then my company was Modif Effect. And then at that time, we sort of became all one conglomerate, which is still mode effect, but the makeup of our team is, we still have a T net side to our agency and then we have a WooCommerce side to our agency and we’ve got some folks that we help with Shopify. I hope it’s okay to say that on the Do the Woo podcast. We very much are in the WooCommerce, we care about that space and we do a lot for our customers and still see that as absolutely our, if not our largest, one of our largest opportunities for growth. But we truly are an e-commerce firm.

That’s who we know, who we serve, who we know best, and yeah, that’s it. And then, I dunno, I’m kind of rambling or going on a long way of explaining, but the outgrowth, like you were mentioning, sort of getting into digital marketing that’s come as a way of recognizing our customers. Like I mentioned in that revenue space of say two to 10 million, somewhere in there, that sweet spot, what we’ve realized is that these particular clients are not especially thrilled with the folks that they use for digital marketing. So it just naturally came as a reach out from them and kind of a curiosity from us to say, Hey, what are you doing over here with your Google Analytics? Who’s helping you with your SEO? Have you seen that you’re running Google Ads and there’s sort of some disparity between what you’re paying and what you’re getting on conversions.
So there’s been a little bit of a curiosity of our to scratch at that as well as clients just naturally being a little unsatisfied and asking us about it. So in addition to our T net team and our PHP team, we’ve grown a new business unit for marketing and that’s been going really well. Excited to help clients like I mentioned before, in a holistic way as it relates to their e-commerce as far as attracting traffic, converting it, and making sure that we continue to nurture customers and create future opportunities for growth on their stores. So I

Robert:
Remember a time where full service agencies were sort of vaulting and keeping whatever core competency they had and then just working on a partner to partner basis. So if they were a technical agency, they work with graphics and design or search engine marketing or content teams totally separate that are totally separate businesses. You’ve evolved into a full service agency. Do you see pros and cons for both kinds of operations?

Cody:
Not yet. I think so far it’s only been a pro for us because while our marketing business unit is small, it’s helped us learn more about marketing on the development side and then also more about development in the marketing unit. So it’s just been good because I think part of that is just we’re very disciplined in the type of customer we serve, which is online stores. We are always kind of in those same conversations. People are pretty woven together and conversations and clients and accounts. So it’s not very siloed in the sense of participation. And so far it’s been pretty much all pros. I mean, I haven’t seen many really that I can think of or name right now.

Robert:
So there’s no trade off on making sure you have all that staffing. The first thing that comes to mind is that a staffing expense of keeping a full team is different than being a little more flexible with partnering ad hoc.

Cody:
It’s been a stretch. I mean, I think for us it’s all been organic. There hasn’t been a sit down to say we have to hire five marketing people and then we have to pound the pavement and find clients to satisfy that. It’s been very steadily steady organic growth for us, and we’ve been really just focused on our current development clients serving them. So that’s been, I think it’s really just a benefit to how my partners built this business previously with just the structure in which targets or clients we targeted and the trust we built with them over the years and then recognizing there’s an opportunity to step into that marketing space and help them with other services that really will be a benefit to their business. So I don’t know. I mean, I feel like, yeah, I hear you. I hear those things all the time, but for us, I feel like it’s been only been a value add for our customers so far.

Robert:
No, that’s great to hear. So I’m going to have to ask on behalf of the audience, what are the nice steps, I dunno if they’re easy or difficult to take to get to the position since you’re already seven plus years into this to help them become as successful.

Cody:
I think it’s just familiarizing yourself well, so are you talking about for store owners or agency owners?

Robert:
For agency owner source? We’ll get to the stores very soon, but on the agency side, if you have a team of three people right now, how do you look to what are the critical next steps to get it to Mode Effect level?

Cody:
Yeah, right. So I honestly think it has to do with just treating your customers like gold, earning trust with your customers, looking to offer value as much as you can above your own, really above your own health and your profit. So to say those things are obviously necessary to be in business, but really showing your customers that you care and showing and treating them well and earning trust is going to go so far because for us, we’ve been fortunate to keep some clients over 10 years, and I mean even extremely large clients over 10 years, which is just unheard of. And that just comes to showing that we’ve done everything we can to treat them well and add value to them. So I think that’s first and foremost, number one. Number two would be really making sure that you care for the folks that you work with, making sure that you invest in them, making sure you recognize them, making sure you support them in every which way you can professionally and even personally. I mean I think there’s space to make sure that you have empathy and you have a genuine care for what’s going on in their lives. So I think really it’s kind of like that one and two, taking care of your clients. You don’t have a business without clients. And then two, just making sure your team is well taken care of. And then those are sort of the one and two of what I would say is most important for a baseline of an agency’s growth.

Robert:
Perfect. Now let’s get to the store side. So if you are that small store selling on the S word or some other platform, no, we can say Shopify. I don’t think Bob’s going to bleep those words out because obviously Shopify had huge growth during the pandemic and it’s become a name folks know. So I got a bunch of questions around that. I guess the first one will be regardless of store platform, whether it’s WooCommerce or something else, what are the key things that a store owner should look to do right away? And let’s say this is a very small shop, we’re talking $10,000 a month in revenue.

Cody:
I think just recognizing the below hanging fruit you have to take advantage of as it relates to your website, for instance, I think it astounds me how many people don’t understand analytics, especially at that level and they’re just really making it their mission to familiarize themselves with sort of the baseline things you need to know as it relates to good website, health core web vitals, Google Analytics, everything that relates to your webmaster settings and just overall health of your website, your speed, just making sure that you’re heading in the right direction as it relates to how your website functions. Are you missing opportunities? Are you not nurturing customers? Do you have an email list? I think email list is another thing that’s so huge. That’s another thing. I get on calls with stores of all sizes every single day, and one of the things that I recognize oftentimes is just how much of a missed opportunity email automation is.
It’s like it’s either buy from me or don’t buy from me. Like listen, it’s imperatives to make sure that you capture somebody you with whatever small information they’re going to give and reward them for that information, whether it’s a coupon or it’s just value and email or whatever. Because if they’re not buying today, they can buy next week, next month, or maybe even in a year. I have no idea what you’re selling, but you have to build an you to do something. So I think those are the two things I would say are very important. Making sure that you just familiarize yourself with those baseline things and then email, email is just so important.

Robert:
And what are you seeing with regards to sort of all the tracking around that? Obviously third party cookies are disappearing, all that cookie madness is going away, cookie getin, as I’ve heard some people call it, do you need to be tracking all those reads and clickthroughs as well, or is it just good enough to get the information out there?

Cody:
I do think you have to understand a baseline like listen, I know the avatar we work with, nobody’s going to be able to be a deep student, like a very experienced student of all things as it relates to information gathering and Google and trends and whatnot. I think it’s just good to have a high level awareness of those things and then understand where your deficiencies are and then also have a game plan for how you’re going to meet those deficiencies. And then not only deficiencies, but opportunities and opportunities are very important as it relates to say, yeah, on the information email gathering side. It’s like that’s such a huge opportunity for store owners just to get people known to people. You can take a list and you can familiarize an audience on social media and you can go to search and you can go and utilize that so well to just become known and stay in front of people. Really.

Robert:
Gotcha. So for some of the more technical things like handling cart abandonment and all of that, what are some suggestions you put out there for stores?

Cody:
So we use a tool that uses their email automation to do that, and I almost sound like I’m the email guy now pounding the deck, talking about email or something. I mean, it really has to do again with email, getting somebody in there if there’s any capture of email, we can chase them down on abandoned cart, offer them some type of a discount to come back and finish their checkout. And I can’t tell you with stores of a certain size how valuable that is to do abandoned cart. And that’s another one. I mean, like I said, stores not leveraging those low hanging fruit opportunities just to bring in more conversions and revenue and capture the audience that they either already have or could have with the eyeballs that are actually hitting their website. Ben abandoned car is huge, huge opportunity for a store of the size, like you mentioned.

Robert:
So we’re here to educate folks. So I’m not going to let you off the hook by saying we use a tool. What tool do you use?

Cody:
So we use two, we use Active Campaign. Okay. And we used High Level as well.

Robert:
Oh, I have not heard of High Level. I know ActiveCampaign. Well, they’re local when I’m home firm. No, that’s excellent. Well, let’s run with that since we love to do these sort of ad hoc. What other mission critical tools can store owners either somehow take advantage of either internally or obviously more helpful with an agency who knows how to use those tools? What else besides one of these car abandonment email tools?

Cody:
It depends on the store size. On the larger size, I’ve started to see some of our larger clients that’s running subscriptions get a lot of value out of using Metorik. That’s been a very valuable tool kind of on the high end for stores that are a little bit larger, kind of in that approaching eight figures, they’ve gotten a lot of value out of using that tool sort of as a separate component. Let’s say ships station’s really important. A lot of the stores that come to us are doing a lot of shipping of their products and ShipStation is still one of those really important tools that runs kind of parallel to the website and helps people not go crazy managing their shipping. And that’s actually kind of like a smaller topic. I think WooCommerce, the admin can be an impediment to people at a certain size feeling like their store is just kind of a bear to do all of their sort of operations within.

If you’re in there managing fulfillment and you’re doing all of those things, I think at a certain size store slowness can become a component of, or just even the enormity of what’s in your store for your staff. You sort of want to take away that overwhelm and point them towards an external tool like ShipStation or Metorik or whatnot. So those are two. And then for smaller folks, I mean just again, familiarizing yourself. Make yourself a student of Google Analytics, understand the type of traffic you’re getting and you’re not getting understand why people aren’t sticking around. I think that’s just, it’s insane how people just are, store owners particularly are not making themselves students of understanding what behavior happens on their website and what missed opportunities they have and what opportunities they have. I just think that’s of a smaller size, that’s something you should know extremely well.

And then of course, mixed in there is your email. Talk to your audience, make sure you’re constantly in front of them. I mean, I really feel like what’s interesting about email is you see certain retailers are sending daily emails. I mean, of course if you’re in the $10,000 a month range and you sell one product or maybe two products, I could see how that’s a challenge to talk to your audience every single day. But what’s the limit of what you can talk about? Start thinking about content, start thinking about what your audience cares about and start engaging them. Make it your goal to not only stay in front of them, but to be known by them and care them and show that by ways of reaching out to them and adding value, whether that’s always going to be a sales driven tactic or it’s just going to be a touch a point and that, I promise you, that does move the needle.

Robert:
So focus on really becoming a subject matter expert in whatever you’re selling. Yeah,

Cody:
Absolutely.

Robert:
So interestingly, I did not hear you say in the last been on for almost half an hour plus or minus anything about social media?

Cody:
Yeah, well, I think I would say social media is pretty assumed in my instance. And yeah, good point. Good call out. Media is important. I see that as kind of almost similar to email. Social media is a very important part of what they’re doing, especially Instagram. It’s insane how integrated you can make your Instagram with your online store these days. I mean, how many stores do I know that exclusively do or have some sort of their inventory all showing up on Instagram and you can basically complete a checkout on there. So I think that’s important. I think Instagram really moves the needle. TikTok moves the needle. I got to say, man, I got four kids and I’m in my early forties, and so I’m like a dinosaur out here when it comes to TikTok and some of the social media stuff, man. So I’m not out here on those social media networks spending a lot of time, but I can see how it’s valuable and important for a lot of stores. So yeah, good call out. I think I’m used to talking about things that we provide services for. We don’t yet offer much for social media here.

Robert:
Great. I’m liking this thread here because there’s a sense that the TikToks and Instagrams, and I’m going to add s to all the social medias of the world, are looking to capture the entire experience within their platform. If someone says, I’m just going to build my entire shop and life on Instagram, what can WooCommerce folks say, this is why you shouldn’t do that. What are the pros and cons of working with WooCommerce versus just saying, you know what, I’m going to sell T-shirts on Instagram. How do you make that conversation happen, I guess?

Cody:
Well, I think it’s a mistake. Build anything on a rented platform. So I mean, in a brick and mortar sense, you could set up in a suite and go month to month or sign a two year lease, and when that second year is up, they could decide, we don’t want to renew it because we don’t like you. Or there’s something that’s out of your hands essentially. But even more so on a digital platform, say anything on social media, I think it’s tricky to be able to just solely depend on that as your platform. I think you have to go back to the hub and spoke method. Your website’s really the hub and those social media outlets, the emails, any of your ads or anything, those are really the spokes of the wheel, so to say. So it’s great to leverage social media in some type of setting.

I see it all the time on Instagram where certain stores are making it so easy to get a product, see it in a link, even buy it on Instagram, but they’re just as diligent. I mean far more diligent on their website and constantly bringing people back through SMS or email or social media and whatnot. But it all comes back to the website eventually. So it’s sort of in a micro instance, I think that’s probably the best strategy to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Again, hub and spoke, but your mileage may vary depending on which particular industry you’re in or what you’re selling. I think it’s important to really think through what are your competitors doing? What do they have success in doing So to say what do they seemingly have success in doing on Instagram, you can at least go on there or really any of the social platforms, you can see what’s getting good engagement by likes or whatnot.

Even if that is inflated, you can see what could be really getting a lot of eyeballs and see if you can replicate some of those things by taking some of the things on your website and creating sort of a micro instance or a micro experience on social media. So that’s sort of the way I would advise somebody to go with it, never just stay and build it all on a social media platform, sort of like I think WooCommerce is such a good platform because our customers that run WooCommerce are so very loyal to the platform and very understanding of why they are here, and it just really makes sense because it is sort of an ownership type of situation with open source and knowing that you can control your destiny and knowing you can extend it and whatnot. And I think that a lot of that lends itself to why a website is very important as a hub instead of a web or instead of a social media network being a hub, so to say.

Robert:
So yeah, publish once, repurpose everywhere else.

Cody:
Yes,

Robert:
I’m happy that we’ve gone so far, but I’m going to save it for last because if we don’t talk about it, we won’t talk about it. AI and WooCommerce, what does that look like in the next six months and in the next three years?

Cody:
I’m going to do the ostrich routine and just put my head in the I. Ever since I saw Terminator two, I was way too freaked out to acknowledge ai. I think AI is just, we’re sort of at the, I don’t know, it’s the first scene in the movie, first scene in a first chapter of the book, so to say. I think the opportunity for, I want to say that AI is going to really be a huge outgrowth and a huge opportunity for store owners. And I think right now what we’re seeing is just sort of that first application is on chatbots and sort of having that somewhat customized experience or that friendly experience with having some type of a shopping assistant. You think about what Apple has put out with the Vision Pro, I think that is going to be an opportunity for people to easily buy things.

For instance, I know we right now are looking at people on social media, out in public with Vision Pro and think, oh my God, this just looks ridiculous. But I promise you, I promise you, it will become more fashionable and more acceptable. And what’s going to happen is you’re going to see something more like you saw in Minority Report, you’re going to be walking by the store or driving by a place and you’re going to be able to be aware of something that interests you and something will retarget you. Can you imagine either riding a bike, driving a car, or walking by a store or just seeing something you’re watching on a video and it will sort of call to mind or allow you to bookmark something of interest, and then we’ll start to kind of feather in some of those products you might be interested in from that certain brand or whatnot.

I think that’s kind of the future of how it’s going to go with brands and AI and online shopping, just making it so much easier for it to be in our subconscious and our conscience with the devices that we use. And whether it’s a screen, whether it’s some type of thing we wear, something we listen to. I think that’s just going to become something that just allows us to be more, or rather stores to become more sticky to us. So that’s kind of the way I see it going in the future, and that’s going to be something that is probably leveraged through ar, augmented reality or even virtual reality and just more and more opportunities for advertisers to grab you. I mean, just a small example of that, it’s not really ai, but when you’re on Peacock watching a show, when you pause the screen, they’re hitting you with an ad, but take that to another level, and if you see something and it allows you to bookmark something of interest in your brain or in something that always is connecting to you, then it makes it so much easier for brands to kind of target you and sell to you or whatnot.

I don’t know, that’s sort of off the top of my head where I could see it’s going and where I think there’s opportunities, but I think that’s going to continue unfold with how accessible devices become and how sort of more things become more socially acceptable. It’s kind of like Google Glass too, you know what I’m saying?

Robert:
That’s what I was thinking. And there were some fun words for that as well.

Cody:
Right? So it’s funny is look at how ridiculous and heavy that Vision Pro is. I mean, it’s just well designed as it can be. I mean, it’s not, and again, people make fun of it and it’s like, oh, look at these guys with their mouth open in public and look at how ridiculous they look before it. It’s just going to be contact lenses and you’re not going to be able to distinguish that and think about what Elon Musk is making with Neuralink. That’s going to be a game changer. There’s actually a bit by the comedian I saw where he is like, man, this is going to be terrible. He is like, all it’s going to be is like, well, it’s like everybody gets the chip in their head. They’re going to have all their memories behind a paywall. Now it’s like this memory is brought to you by Burger King or whatnot.

Robert:
Well, in that augmented privacy and paranoid future, I’m just going to be slightly terrified

Cody:
It’s coming, man. The younger the generations get, they don’t care about who has their information, and it’s fascinating that you, just fascinating to me watching human behavior. You look at, I think you and I are probably of a similar age.

Robert:
I’m happy to be called to my early forties, so thank you, Cody.

Cody:
All right, take it. But we watch videos of people on social media having to say everything to everybody on your network and crying or just talking to an audience or venting to an audience, and I’m just like, yeah, I guess at my age and in my generation, I don’t feel like I need to do that, but every younger generation has grown up without not knowing a world without that. I can remember a world without the internet, and my youngest, she can’t even imagine a world. She didn’t even know what an iPod is.

Robert:
Oh my gosh.

Cody:
Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. But my point being is to them, it’s like there’s kids that are being born now that they won’t even know world without AR or VR or any of those things. So I guess the point being is while you, and I think that’s crazy, thinking about some type of ad being driven that’s going through your head or in your eyes or whatnot, it’s definitely a lot of things that we can see becoming more commonplace.

Robert:
I’ll be at least excited to see what that future looks like. Cody, thank you so much. What are the best ways to get ahold of you in whatever reality we’re in?

Cody:
You can always go to modif effect.com, M-O-D-E-E-F-F-E-C t.com and email straightaway. I think there’s links to all of our socials as well. And then I’m at CodyL on most of the socials as well.

Robert:
And what’s your augmented reality phone number? No, I’m kidding. Cody, thanks so much. This went from, and this is why I love the Woo AgencyChat. We start with the basics and then we end up in a future that could be fantastic or completely dystopian, depending on your views. Thank you so much, Cody.

Cody:
Yeah, thanks. Pleasure.

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: WooBits, a Plethora of WooCommerce Tips and Insights

First, more people now know that Woo in the early days was an acronym. Or it grew from Woo. Host Katie Keith had asked a question and Mike Stott answered, which ended up with a short lesson that Woo stands for Winning Others Over. She even did a poll asking if others knew this. Only 9.3% did which wasn’t a surprise to me as the post that even talked about this dated back July of 2016, written by co-founder Mark Forester. The pullout quote simply said:

Over time, “Woo” became an acronym for “winning others over,” a slogan we rally behind.

Mark Forester

So a bit of Woo trivia for you there.

Now for something completely different

Yeah, that’s the opening line of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And maybe doesn’t even fit in here. In fact I may be slighting in some sarcasm as many of you know that this may very well be the 99th iteration of WooBits. Heck, only a show or two ago I thought I was returning to some simple bits and pieces of things I had found. And guess what, in the whole scheme of things, the Woo acronym mention was the only thing that really caught my eye.

So with that said, the brand new shiny WooBits, again.

A plethora of golden nuggets

Somehow this seems to have been an idea I had before but it never came to life. But lately I have been doing some things you may or may not have noticed. Taking a part of a show that drills in more on a specific piece of the conversation, creating a text post, putting that on LinkedIn as an article the following week and then posting it on the blog at BobWP.com

This who idea comes from the fact of all the incredible tips that lie in almost each and every episode. So how about I take this a step further and add a bit more work for myself. WooBits will now be just that. Episode bits. It will be two part.

  1. I’ll pull short tips from previous shows that give you, the listener an actionable piece of advice or something to ponder on.
  2. And I’ll open it up for Woo builder and business tips for others to drop in.

Since I want the tips pulled in to be short, we will shoot for an episode 5-10 minutes. More or less.

And if we are all lucky, this will be the perfect fit for WooBits moving forward and I won’t have to talk about this again.

So watch out for more on this and a place you can share your tip with a bit more of the logistics and content I will be looking for. So have a great weekend and watch for us next week.

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Email Marketing for Woo and WordPress Builders and Businesses with Greg Zakowicz


February 15, 2024

Thanks to Our Sponors

Greg shares insights on the current state of email marketing, emphasizing the importance of automation and relevance in driving customer engagement.

He also discusses the role of AI in email marketing, suggesting it will be a tool rather than a replacement for marketers.

Greg advises businesses to start simple with email marketing and gradually improve over time and talks about the importance of list cleaning to maintain high open and click rates.


Transcript
Adam:
Welcome to Woo Biz Chat. I am your co-host, Adam Weeks, and I am excited for our very first guest. First guest, Ms. Emma Young. Would you mind telling us what are we doing today?
Emma:
Yeah, well I am not the lovely guest today, so this is a surprise. Surprise. But yeah, we’re going to dive in deep with our new pal that I will not introduce and let him introduce himself because he’ll do a much better job.
Adam:
Greg, tell us about yourself.
Greg:
You just don’t want to pronounce the last name.
Adam:
So true. You bound us out, Greg. I’m there on that, but yes, Greg, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?
Greg:
Absolutely. So my name is Greg Zakowicz. Easy pronunciation there. It looks worse than it is. So I am a e-commerce expert at Omnisend, which is an email and SMS marketing automation platform. So they’re based in Lithuania. I’m jet lagged because I was just over there for the past week getting together, doing some team building stuff, which is always awesome. I love going out there. So we are a hundred thousand plus customers. We’ve been in business for 12, 13, 14 years now, and we are rocking a roll and so we are very excited about the WooCommerce community and general overarching WordPress community as well. So super happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Adam:
Well, we are glad to have you. It’s good to have someone who knows what they’re talking about. And for today’s topic, because our topic today is what even is email marketing, and we have all types of good questions that we’re going to grill you with. We’re going to put your feet to the fire. Awesome. No, we won’t, but I truly am and very sincerely glad to have you on because I have questions about email marketing and you also do SMS marketing and what is the state of email marketing in 2024? I will preface this by saying I currently am not happy with the state of email marketing in 2024. Tell me how are you guys doing with that? How do you think about email marketing right now?
Greg:
I’m going to answer the question, but I want to circle back to, and I will forget because old, so I had love to know why you don’t think you don’t love the state of it right now, but we’ll circle back to that afterward if we can. So this is crazy. I’ve been doing email marketing across a bunch of different roles for 18 years now, which is, to me, it’s kind of mind boggling. One that I’m that old, but two that I’ve been able to do something such as email for 18 years now. So where we say we’ve got a stats report, we put these things out, they’re non gated on Omnisend website, omnisend.com. So we launched one today. This will probably not be live today, but it is out now when you’re listening to this. So what we do is we capture emails and all the data sent by our customers throughout the course of the year.
I pull a bunch of spreadsheets together, I sift through it, I analyze it. So email is strong. You would maybe not think that, but it is strong. It might be stronger now than it ever has before and I think there’s a lot of different reasons for that. But obviously there’s a lot of, just across the industry there is a lot of noise, so many ad platforms where you can monetize now. So social media, you’ve got your paid search, kind of your standards there. You got all these different platforms if you’re a DTC brand and then there’s the old email kind of sitting in the back. It’s not as glamorous as TikTok and Instagram, but it works, man. It works. So I think the reason is I look at myself and I go to my email and obviously I’m signed up for tons of different programs and part of that is my job, but even if I weren’t, I’m going there for the sole purpose of seeing what a brand is there to offer me, whether it’s showcasing new products, just seeing what’s going on with the brand.

Maybe I like the brand, maybe I’m looking for a sale, but there is something with intent with a customer at that point. So this was the old thing when Gmail rolled out their promotions tab and I was doing client consulting at the time and it was like the world was on fire. They’re like, wow, we’re not going to get in the inbox. I’m like, no, this is a good thing for you. When people go there, they’re going there to shop or some indication of shop again. So the thing here is email is an opt-in channel. So people are saying, yes, here’s my information, send me some marketing messages and that same thing with SMS, right? And we’ll get into these topics and all this stuff, but that’s why it’s really, it’s doing really well now. I think there has been an evolution recently for what is working more so than other things and where that is trending from an email perspective, which I think from a marketer standpoint is really good because it makes your job easier. But there have been some very noticeable shifts over the last couple of years and that’s more around automated emails and how brands are using those more strategically and more effectively now. So I give you a lot there. Feel free to throw questions at me and we’ll rip into it.
Emma:
Yeah, so I mean going off of that, if you had to give more or less a definition of everything that can funnel into what email marketing is, if it was like somebody was Googling what even is email marketing in a sentence or two, how would you answer that?
Greg:
It is a direct communication from business to individual consumer. So simple as that delivered via email, right? Sounds simplistic can be simplistic can be very difficult as well based on how strategic and how in depth you want to get. But from a very nature, I build an email, I send it to the person who says, yes, send me the email, and they open the email and hopefully they buy.
Adam:
There you go. I’ll swing back around to the, give you the opportunity to answer my question or my statement that I don’t really like the state of email. And I’ll clarify that with, I hate my inbox currently I do not like my email inbox. I currently, lemme see on my phone Google says, I’ve got 40,000 unread email messages. It’s ridiculous at what I’m seeing and o sometimes when I look at this, what bubbles up inside me is this frustration of why are these companies sending me all this stuff and where’s the unsubscribe? How do you feel about being on the receiving end of that marketing?
Greg:
So I personally like it now I have two different things. I have my personal marketing inbox, which are brands that I love, and then I have mine that I subscribe to monitor other brands and I get about probably six to 700 emails a day from there. So I was just looking while you were doing this, I’m like, oh, what my unread is, it doesn’t even show it anymore, it just cropped it off. So I’m probably well over, I dunno how many digits they have, but I’m probably well over that. So I personally like it and the reason I like it is one, it’s I could do it when I choose. So I get an SMS message and I like SMS marketing messages. I’m a little more selective with who I sign up for, but I do like the messages. But the one thing with those, whether you have notifications on or off, you always get the little red icon, the unread thing.
So we all know those things drive me nuts. So I’m going to go look at the SMS message, even if it’s something I turn it off, I can ignore email for a couple of days if it’s not fitting in my lifestyle or I’m on vacation or whatever, but I go back to it. That’s what I like about it, but I always know where it is. I know it’s searchable. So today’s my mother’s birthday last week I’m searching for to send her some flowers so I know what I can search for birthdays, flowers, whatever, and I can kind of aggregate and see where my best deal might be coming from and things like that. And that’s what I like about it. It’s just from that standpoint, I can choose to engage when I want to engage, it’s always there for me and I can choose to ignore it when I want to ignore it. Never ignore emails, but it’s there.
Emma:
It’s the 40,600 unread. But out of that long list, what are some of the things that do catch your eye or what have you seen in a personal way? Is it something that would get you to click on it but also that’s worked for you in the past when you’re the sender? Kind of a two-sided question.
Greg:
Yeah, I always tell people, it’s a really good question because I always tell people and they’re like, well, I need the latest trends and all that. I go, well, what appeals to you? Which is exactly what you’re asking because it’s going to appeal to the other people as well. So things that get me, and we’ve seen a rise, I’ll give you a long answer, but we’ve seen a rise with brands doing this more over the past few years, but really leading into the social proof. So top rated products, five star reviewed products, things like that where you might have it in the subject line, those things capture my attention. I know it’s a good quality product or service, whatever it might be. We’ve seen a lot of those, but those generally catch my eyes and it sounds so simple, and you might shake your head when I say this, but use of emojis and subject lines, they’ve been doing it for years.
This is not a new concept, but there are a lot of brands that still do not use ’em or use ’em very selectively. And what happens, especially if you’re on your phone, it just makes it stand out a little bit more. So it’s none of it just like one Christmas tree or a one smiley face, right? Five stars in a row. It breaks up that black and white space. And even if I’m not going to open the email, I’m going to see it there. I’m going to visualize and it’s small. I always say the small stupid things win. It’s a small, maybe simple is a better word, but small simple things win sometimes
Emma:
Something small like a one word or ah, would that grab your attention?
Greg:
Absolutely. So this is where things change, right? It was 15 years ago, it was like don’t put, it was like the emojis, you could start putting ’em in subject lines and it’s like, oh, is this going to cause it to go to spam? I’m like, no, probably not. We test it, it turns out it doesn’t. But it was never use all caps, it’s going to get you in this. And my clients used to do use all caps and their open rates would go up dramatically. I’m like, well, don’t do it every time, but this is a good tactic, right? Yeah. Gmail, Yahoo. If you’re still using Hotmail or Outlook, right? Switch over. But they’re good at filtering out, well maybe less so outlook, but they’re good at filtering out junk versus other things. That subject line is not going to get you in there. Gaps where your eyes stop and be like, oh, why is there a gap there? It could be pre-header text and not the subject line as well, but that white space, the color, those are things that are going to naturally gravitate to people’s eyes. So short stuff, perfect all caps breaks it up. Perfect, right? It’s that difference in there.
Adam:
And this is exactly leading into my next question and you’ve begun to answer it because what I’m curious about is you have been in this industry for so long, you’ve seen all the changes. I think Covid probably accelerated some of the different issues and we’re seeing different things. So I guess my question now is here in still early 2024, what is working specifically? And you kind of mentioned that and then I’ll kind of follow it up with, do you have any use cases or specific companies that are just knocking it out of the park? Their open rates are really good and yeah, I’d love to know about some of the, Ooh, they’re doing it right.
Greg:
So I’ll give you both of these here. So the first one, what’s working for people? This is where, I mean automation has not new. It’s been around for my God almost the entire 18 years. When I first got into it, we were doing abandoned cards. It’s just a lot easier to do now than it was 18 years ago. Automation works though. So I mentioned the stats report, right? We sent 23 billion email marketing messages last year.
Adam:
Wow 23. Those numbers are nuts.
Greg:
So let’s roll into this a little bit. 23 billion marketing messages in a year. Alright, now we’re converting, we’re getting all those orders coming in. 41% of all email marketing orders last year sent by Omnis sign customers came from automated messages. So almost half from automated messages, the percentage of sends that accounted for 2%. So 40% of all orders last year generated from email marketing came from 2% of the emails and they’re automated emails. This is where brands we talk about WooCommerce, brands that are maybe looking for a place to start. This is where I always tell people, automation’s the new segmentation. Segmentation can be easy. It could also be extremely difficult. And I think the problem most companies face, even large ones that I’ve worked with, they have the exact same problem. Like okay, we can segment a little bit, we can’t do it consistently because if I segment four different ways, I need four different creatives.
Or maybe if I have more texts, I got to copyright for things. It’s time consuming. And most people are not just doing email, they’re doing paid search or paid social or they’re doing these other things too. Automation’s where you layer where you’re going to make your money. And that number has been going up that 41 to two a couple of years ago, it was like 36 to three. It’s slowly going up. The reason it works is because those messages are triggered, they are based on you’s behavior, which means they are relevant to you. I abandoned a shopping cart, we know the intent is to buy. I sign up for an email program, why am I signing up? Well, I’m probably going to buy from you or someone else, but I’m shopping for hours, abandonment, what am I doing? Well, I’m on your website, I’m browsing something, something in my life has gotten me there.
That’s why these things kill so much. So let’s say if you’re looking for a place to start, you’re looking for a place to pour some gasoline. If you’re looking for a new shift in strategy, go where the automation is. And then part B to that is follow the intent of the customer. So order and shipping confirmation messages, we see ’em drive a lot of orders. They are really effective messages. If you optimize the most of those orders coming from its three messages. It’s your welcome messages, your browse abandonment and your card abandonment. Now we send a lot more of those than other ones, which changes that ratio a bit. So it’s not just black and white, but that’s high intent. The one we’re seeing up and coming more sends last year than the year before. The conversion rate is the best conversion rate of any message, which this is surprising because card abandonment usually owns that one back in stock messages. And I’m seeing just anecdotally as well, getting more of these in that 400 program inbox. I’m getting back in stock messages, but it follows the same pattern, right? It’s fear of loss, it’s social proof, all rolled in one. And by the way, we got these things back in stock and before they’re gone and those things kind of capture people’s attention to what’s news. So companies doing well. So case studies, yeah, I’ll throw a few of ’em around.

So there’s a company called Fig Pin. They sold their products in brick and mortar stores. Covid hit, had to pivot, launched an email program. They really wasn’t a focus of theirs. They heard a guy like me going, Hey, you know what? Welcome browse cart abandonment, maybe we should try this out. But now they’re generating, I got this right here, but they’re around maybe like 22% of their 24% of their email marketing revenues coming from those automated messages, those three messages. So they’re having the wheels work in the background, they’re focused on other things, they’re focused on growing their list and that’s just going to accelerate those things. Edmondson Sports, so it’s a sporting apparel company over in, I believe they’re in Sweden, so they’re kind of seeing very similar things here. So order confirmation automation, right? They’re like, well, let’s optimize these things. We know their customers, can we repeat this?

So 17% of their revenue is coming from order confirmation messages now. So beauty about that is every single order is now a repeat customer. So we know once we can get that second one, we start to flip the scales on profitability per customer and things like that. And you get two, throw a post-purchase message in there and we start rolling the dice a little bit more now and I think there are about 30% of their email revenue coming from automated messages now as well. So it’s just a couple for you. We’ve got a bunch on our website. I don’t want to bore you to death here, but you’re seeing a similar pattern here. Kerrits is another example. Same thing. They’re like 25% ish of revenue coming on automated messages. They do some segmentation, they kill a little more specific with some of theirs, but the automation allows ’em to spend that extra time where we know we’re generating money in the backend. What do I not need to do now? I don’t need to obsess about, I have to get an email out today because otherwise we’re not going to make any money. And that’s one of the benefits of that as well.
Emma:
I’m curious about the subscribers or the clients that you’re sending them to. Do you ever scrub or prune the inactive subscribers and then there’s the second part to it. Do you often, if you have maybe a newsletter and your current clients, do you tend to separate those lists or merge them together?
Greg:
So I’ll answer the second part first because it’s a shorter answer completely client dependent. I think what we generally find is unless they’re really good at separating those two silos, most will mix in there and they might have, say they got a product in an informational type message, they might send it to everyone or they’ll send the product to everyone, but they’ll just send the informational to maybe the informational, but usually most brands will wind up mixing and commingling those things. The first question about, Hey, do we clean in active context? Super important question, super important that brands do this. Not all brands do it, right? They want to get a subscriber count. I worked at brand before and I’m like, her name was Vero. I go, Vero O, you got 20,000 contacts, you haven’t opened an email in over a year. And she’s like, I can’t get rid of it.
My boss wants a hundred thousand subscribers. They’re trying to get to a number. I’m like, this is going to come back and bite you in the backside and there’s a lot of negative ramifications from sending to inactive contacts. No, their Google and Yahoo just enacted new deliverability requirements as the February 1st this year got a little bit of a ramp up window before they start hitting you hard. So you’ve got authenticate your email, your D cm, your D mark, all these things to prove that you are a legit center. They’re trying to clamp down on spam. One of those qualifications is spam rate. And now if you’re inactive, you’re not marketing as spam, but there is a tie in here, I promise you. So very low spam rate, which means you need to grow your list the right way. If you’re doing a raffle for an iPad and you’re selling whatever, you’re going to get a lot of bad addresses on there.

They just want the iPad and then you start sending to ’em, they can hit spam. So you clean your list that way. Now the thing that Gmail has always done that people don’t take account here is that they will monitor open rates and a lot of the ISPs will do this, but the open rates, the click rates on here, and that is one of their qualifications to being one, are they treating their list the right way? But two, are they being responsible marketers? They sending to people who want to, and part of that is if I get a low open rate, I’m sending to an active contact, they’re not opening. It’s dragging that down. This has always been a major thing. What we used to see is your open rates in Gmail would go from 12 to 11 and then it gets to eight and then all of a sudden drops to one and eight to nine was around that cutoff.

And when it drops to one guarantee, you’re being bulked, you’re getting a very few to your inbox, it’s hard to get out of the bulk folder. So Google, yahoo got together and they said, okay, we got these other factors. We’re going to make companies comply with these changes, give ’em a little ramp up time, but we’re also going to factor open rates. We’re going to factor click rates, we’re going to factor spam rates. All these things go into whether you’re going to get in the inbox or you’re going to get bulk folders. So it is super important to clean your list. I’d recommend doing it twice a year and just get some of those out there. If I know brands are hesitant and they go, they sign up around December or November, they’re holiday shoppers, I don’t want to get rid of ’em because the holidays going to come around next year.

So it’s understandable. I get emails and then they drop off in February and I start getting hit again in November, December, and they’re doing the same thing to me, right? It’s just the brand. The simple thing to do there is put them onto a segment, still send to ’em, but send to ’em a lot less maybe once a month just to keep it going there. But you’re not sending emails, which are just repeat emails going to non openers of the initial message two days later. That’s the thing. You want to keep ’em on your list and if they don’t come back the next year, then you want to clean ’em out. But if they’re inactive, they’re not opening for 12 months, they’re doing more damage than good.
Adam:
Wow. This is just great value. If you are a product company in WordPress, this is really useful information. I would love if you could kind of dive in a little bit more to some of the stats that you’re looking at that we could expect. So if you have a product or something in WordPress and you’re sending out your email lists, what are some of the open rates that like, oh wow, we sent that out and that’s bad. That’s good. What are parameters help us understand a good campaign versus a bad campaign and what that range might look like.
Greg:
Yeah, so that’s a good question. So I’ll give you two answers here. The first one, I’ll talk out of both sides of my mouth. So when I was consulting, I would have clients ask me this all the time, like, Hey, do you have any benchmarks? And I just go, well, why do you want to look at benchmarks? They’re like, well, I want to see how I’m doing. I’m like, but they’re good to look at. But don’t compare yourself to it. But I’m going to give you comparisons and I’ll tell you why I say that. So I always say benchmark against yourself. If you’ve got a 16% open rate, your goal should be to get to 17 when you get there to get to 18. The thing with benchmarks, they’re good to look at, they’re good useful guides, but I always warn people don’t use ’em as the set in.
So standard. And the reason you do that is we talk about list cleaning. I could get you an 80% open rate all day long. Every send, if I segment and only send the people who opened the last email or clicked on last email, those are my most engaged. So when you look at other people’s benchmarks, you don’t know how they’re cleaning their list and how they’re aggregating that. So you could have a lot of low or artificially high numbers in here. So that’s always the caveat. Now that being said, I like looking at benchmarks too.
So across those 23 billion messages we sent last year, average open rate across, doesn’t matter, the industry was 25%. It was actually increased from 22.9 a year before. So we saw open rates go up year over year. So we talk about is email dead? How are we doing? Again, people, it’s obvious, and those rates actually go up higher during the Q4 season. So we’re seeing people use email as a place for product discovery. I place the fine, what the discounts are, what the sales are. So we’re seeing 25% open rates. I think that if you have 25% open rate, just from my experience, you’re doing pretty well. I think that’s a pretty good number to be at. I think most brands will probably, it’s always going to be niche based on industry and how often they send. I think most will be anywhere from 16 to 22.
I always used to do 18 to 20 as kind of like we get there. You’re probably doing okay. I think 25 is pretty strong, but that’s great. So if you’re under say 16, you should be looking at getting that up, probably a list cleaning will artificially help that, but it also, you might have a really strong engaged user base and you haven’t cleaned your list in forever and it looks worse than it actually is. You might have a really good open rate across the board and you’re sending the 20,000 people who haven’t opened in four years.
So open rate 20, 25%, I think you’re doing pretty well. Click rate, and I’m going to do this based on when we classify click rate, there’s also click the open rate click rate is click based on email sent. So the number’s going to be a lot lower. So last year, 1.5 is actually up from 1.2 the year before. Again, if you’re hitting, I think it’s a pretty good number to be at. If you’re around there, you want to be above one, but if you’re around there, you’re doing pretty well, right? People are engaging, always look at those ratios though. I can get you a hundred percent open rate and a 1% click or let’s just go 0.2%. Click rate doesn’t really do much for you. It just means you had a really good open rate or good subject line. Maybe you did something but the content didn’t match it there.

So you balance those two things out, you’re pretty good. So in the stats report I talked about, we break things down by industry vertical as well. So we don’t have every industry we reported on, but we do have verticals on there. There’s probably about 1520 of ’em. So you can see there are some wild differences between some of those, but that’s going to be product oriented and competition on there. But that’s where I would go from a metric standpoint. Automated messages, we have those broken down for you as well. They’re going to be significantly higher, right? 50, 60% open rates on most of ’em. You’ll see conversion rates 3000 times better than email conversion rates for just batch and blast ones. So we break all that down by the type of automation. So you can go over there if you’re looking for benchmarks in a baseline for like, Hey, where’s the bang for the buck? But I think you’re there from a metric standpoint,
Emma:
That’s such a great way to look at it, the ratios versus yourself. Because sometimes I look at these numbers and I’m like, oh, open rate is good. It’s going up. And sometimes I’m like, but actually the click it’s so low, but then I’m hearing happy numbers from you and I’m like, oh, we’re doing all right. Hey, but let’s say if your numbers were decreasing and you’re doing all of the things that are on everybody’s checklists, if you had to throw almost a Hail Mary to get it pumping again, what would you recommend that somebody like a company does?
Greg:
So from an artificial inflation standpoint, segment to the segmented people, get them a little extra email or something. Get your numbers up, make yourself feel good, and maybe get a little more juice there. I would say the other thing to look at from a long-term perspective is, again, we’re not talking about rocket science here, but we’re in a place now where it’s always been short attention spans. I mean, this has been a talking point since I was a kid. I’m in my mid forties now, so it’s like, oh, no one’s got attention spans anymore, but we have a lot of noise out there. I mentioned before if I’m on Instagram or TikTok and I’m scrolling, I’m getting ads, you kind of catch something catches your eye or doesn’t and you’re right by it. I don’t think email is much different than that. But as I mentioned before, people are going to email for a very specific reason.
They’re interested in a product. Maybe they’re shopping, maybe they’re doing some product discovery, comparison shopping, what it is. So I go back to the intent and I’m like, okay, let’s look at your email message. Let’s look at what we can templatize in the email that caters to that intent. And what I look at are competitive differentiators or your value adds. So a lot of people offer free shipping, some don’t. This is something that is changing in the industry and brands are trying to figure out what to do with free shipping. But if you offer free shipping or free shipping over a low threshold, promote that in your template. Highly visible. Let people see, hey, before they even click on the email, they know they’re getting free shipping. If it’s not free, but it’s fast, two days or less guaranteed, promote those things. 24 7 customers are promote ’em.

Return policies huge. So if I get a free returns in a company and I got to pay two bucks for shipping and the other one I’ve got to pay for restocking fees or whatever, but I get free shipping, I will generally spend the extra two bucks because I want to know I’m going to be taken care of on the return side. So customer service, values, return policies, whatever, promote those things, put ’em in your template, secondary content, whatever. But those things matter. When people are clicking or opening emails and deciding whether they want to click other things, I think you should templatize as well and you can roll ’em out there. But we talked about social proof before, right? Five star reviews, half sections with either a quote testimonial about how great the product was, how great the customer service was. You’ve got the content on your page because you’re collecting reviews for products.

Take the content, reuse it, plug it in there. And when I say templatize that, I say, okay, what are the challenges that we need to overcome from, I always say, what are the obstacles to conversion you need to overcome? So we sell clothing, people need to know if it’s going to fit. So if you have testimonials, be like, Hey, the sizing on the product was spot on, right? Use that testimonial there. It gives people comfort that they don’t need the bracket they’re purchased, they’re just going to order the large or the extra large, call it a day and you got free returns. So social proof, top selling products, customer testimonials, these things can all be templatized, but they can increase your click rates because it just builds that confidence. Now they might click and not purchase from you, but that’s okay, right? You got to get ’em there to get the juices flown.
Adam:
You got eyeballs and that’s big.
Greg:
But I’ll say this, this is where, so the movie Miracle is where I got this from. So I’m not going to steal this in my own quote, but I always tell people, I’m like let’s feed the wolf. I love the movie Miracle, by the way. So let’s feed the wolf. So I look at this and go, okay, we collected the email, I send you an email, I got these social proofs built in. You click the email and you go to the website and you don’t buy. That’s okay. What do I have going now? I’ve got a browse abandonment automation set up that I’m going to retarget you based on what you were clicking on and then viewing on my website before. Maybe I get you to come back and you cart the product, but you don’t purge it. Now I’ve got the cart abandonment triggering off to you. So I’m doing all these things from a very low cost retargeting perspective where the automations are feeding the wolf now, and at some point I’m going to recapture you and I’m going to recapture you for a heck of a lot less than it cost is to put you retarget on meta channels or paid search or whatever. So like feed the wolf.
Adam:
That’s good. That’s really, I like that and I think that’s just very helpful information as our audience is thinking about themselves and their own business. I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you’re a pretty decent softball player, so I’m going to toss you an easy one. So if a company’s out there and they’re thinking about, Hey, maybe we need is Omnis send right for us. So for instance, I was just getting off of a call earlier and they’ve got a million people in their email list. Is that too big, too small? What’s the ideal size company for Omnis? Send? Where’s your sweet spot?
Greg:
So we work with companies that we have enterprise customers and we have mom and pop solopreneurs working at different costs. A lot of our customers are on free plans. So we do have a free plan, crazy, and we still give those free people 24 7 live support. So we work across the board. I think the small to small mid-size business, the SMBs to the mom and pop, that’s kind of our sweet spot for it. But we have a tool that caters to every one of all sizes. Omniscience is a pretty legit and slick tool. And our whole goal, we are still privately funded. We always say customer funded because if you don’t like us, you don’t like our tool, you’re going to leave. And we don’t lock you in with contracts unless you want a contract. So we let you leave at any time and it makes us better.
It makes the support we give better. So what I tell people is we have three different plans. The pricing is transparent, it’s on the website. You can just go to the pricing calculator, plug in your number of contacts, see how much it’ll cost you with the same thing for SMS. If you choose to do SMS, you can see everything get there. So we have a free plan, we have a standard plan and a pro plan free is free. No credit card required to sign up. You just, when you need more, you upgrade and you choose to pay more. But you could use free for life if you want. And you get the full 24 7 support standards, kind of where most people fall. I would say it’s that middle plan there gets you more emails, gets you a little more tools, and then your pro is going to be your larger, you’ve got a hundred thousand contacts, you’re probably going to want the pro. We give you unlimited email sending with the pro plan. So at it send you an active, we don’t want you to send inactive context, but you can if you want to, right?

And the beauty of this is you want to play with automations, the free plan, you have access to all automations we have. We don’t make you upgrade to get those tools. We have popups built in. If you’re either a WordPress or WooCommerce customer, we have plug and play integrations with both of them. So you can literally install, I went through and did it last week. We were talking about WooCommerce customers three minutes or less. You can install and sync your contacts, sync all that historical data, but we’ve got a WordPress integration as well. So we are set for you and we pride ourselves in being transparent. You can go to the website, we don’t have to connect to the sales person to get pricing unless you want to, but it’s all there on the website for you.
Emma:
Nice. I really like that. Free is free. You don’t have to lock them in because that is probably the most frustrating thing when you’re trying to get out of a membership. They’re like, no, but free is free and that is awesome.
Greg:
So we don’t require the credit card too, which is something I love. I sign up for free stuff and I’m like, oh, that’s great. And they’re like, give me the credit card. And I’m like, oh man, I don’t want to accidentally charge for something here. So we always tell people you want to try us, create an account, play around with it, build a couple automations, see what you like. Contact our support, see if you like our support. We win awards to the support. But that’s the beauty of it. You can just try it out and if you don’t like it, we’ll wish you luck and we will see you in six to eight months or 12 months when you come back to us, but we think you’ll love us. And that’s why we do it.
Emma:
I agree. I think that they’ll love us, but we also want to hear some more cool info from you and maybe do a bit of a speed round to share your knowledge. And then maybe you can help somebody else hit a home run in their email marketing.
Greg:
Hey, so we’re still doing this baseball thing
Emma:
All day, every day,
Greg:
All day, every day. It’s a double header.
Emma:
There we go. You’re welcome back anytime. Okay, so I really want to know something that you would never do the worst one.
Greg:
What would if there was, oh God, is this in business or there’s a lot of things I would never do again. Yes or yes. You know what? This is simple, but this would be perfect for the topic. Something I will never do again. I will never not check an email before I send it out. So
Emma:
That’s true though.
Greg:
Everyone always tells you to typos happen. Mistakes happen. And especially when you’re looking at it so long, your eyes just, this happened to us today on something I’ve been looking at for two weeks and editing it and then we found the day in it today. I’m like, how did we miss this thing? But your eyes look at it. So I’ll give you a story. This takes me back, I dunno, 15 years. And I used to have a boss that would say, Hey, we were trying to come up with subject lines. And he’d say, okay, write 10 subject lines and then write three that you would never ever send to a customer. And I think it’s a really good practice to do because what it does is it gets you out of that mindset of how did you this five things here and you just rejuvenate the words doing this allows that creativity to spill a little bit.
And then ironically, you wind up coming up with a better title that’s not listed there. So of course we got to send test emails and there was a copy paste. It was one of those subject lines that you should never ever send to a customer. And then, I mean you test these things all day long back. So this is back in the day when segmenting used to be MySQL queries. So you would have to test if you had 40 segments, which sometimes we did, you’d have to test 40 different emails. So it’s so much easier now, isn’t it? So just like, all right, tested the first 20, I’m good. And then this subject line was in one of ’em, and I’m like, you know what? I will never not test an email again. So not very lightning round from me. My apologies.
Adam:
But that’s all right. I think it’s a good one, but it’s a great answer. Yeah, proofread your emails and have someone else do it too. So we want to make sure that we rank on the algorithm. So ai, is AI the end of us all, or is it going to be the savior of email marketing and SMS marketing? And I’ll preface that one curious thing about AI is we talk about AB testing. Does AI offer alternatives for A, B, C to E, F, G, infinite, more customized emails or it just means that we’re going to get more crappy emails?
Greg:
So is, we didn’t script this, but this is a shameless plug and piggybacks off what I just said. So Omnisend.com, under resources, we have a tool section. These are free tools, again, not gated, just go and play around with them. We have an AI subject line generator tool on there. So if you’re looking, you’re stuck from a creative standpoint and you want some proposed subject lines, use the tool plug in, Hey, what the deal is, whatever you want to say, it’ll come up with a bunch of ’em. So we also have a product description generator, which you could use if you’re looking to have a little bit of copy in your messages outside of just image-based ones and you want to highlight a product, maybe put some stuff in there and see if it comes up with something creative for you. Shameless plug, but it’s related now.
So these are things tied to obviously email and e-commerce in general. I think AI has the ability with tools like this or with use cases similar to this where it can help a marketer speed things along. I don’t see the day, and this is just me. I mean at some point AI is going to revolutionize the world more than it already has. I’m thinking more like medical side and things like this. But I think from a marketing standpoint, I think it’s going to be a tool, not a replacement. It’s going to assist. It’s going to be the cane that helps us walk. I don’t see it being a day where it’s just be like, okay, we’ve got to send an email to Greg here, spit me out some copy for Greg. I just don’t think we’re there. We talk about segmenting being hard. It’s like, okay, now spit something out that is going to be relevant for him that he knows is not written by AI and has an image that correlates to something like this. I can’t envision it.
Adam:
It’s not there yet.
Greg:
Yeah. It’s not there yet. But two, I can’t think of the person who’s designing this on the back end going, you know what? That is the problem I’m trying to solve, not this stuff. So I think it’s going to be more of a tool than a replacement.
Emma:
I agree actually with AI as a tool, I think at the beginning of last year, we kind of all went through, especially in content, anybody that works with words, I was like, oh dear, what’s happening here? I wish I could think of a baseball putt, but I can’t. And now I think we’re starting to learn how to use it and make sure that we get the bases fully loaded and hit it out of the park with our ai. I was just the advocate. I’ll stop. Stop.
Adam:
I agree with that. The hope I think I have for AI as that tool, as any good tool, if you think of a calculator, it helps you do the mundane things more quickly and more accurately and do it better. So for instance, my hope for email marketing and SMS marketing using AI is going to be emails that are more specific to me that will help the email marketer make sure that, Hey Sally, she’s getting this email that matches maybe her shopping habits better than Joe over here and his shopping habits. That’s where I would like part of my 40,000 unread emails are because a bunch of them didn’t get me to open them because it may be not as relevant to me. And I’m hopeful that AI will solve some of that.
Greg:
So I think we talk about product recommendations, right? Automated product recommendations and emails and it’s gotten so much better and we offer ’em as well. I think every email provider has some version of product recommendations in there. I think they’re important. AI can certainly, I think find those lookalike audiences and AI can serve as a better segmentation engine to feed things like that up. I mean they used to be terrible, right? Kidding me, I was like, Greg products rended just free and you open. It was just like this. It’s like people just chose 20 products through it in there. And I’m like, none of ’em are relevant to me. But to your point, I think that’s probably the one place where you could have a more noticeable impact. So whether it’s product recommendations or just sending a better fine tuning the segmentation. So I think about from a segmentation standpoint, I’m a big advocate of post-purchase emails.
I’m a big advocate of lapse purchaser emails. So hey, Emma hasn’t purchased in three months and she normally does, but it’s still somewhat of a crapshoot. I don’t really know that something in her life has changed. Maybe she was buying something for her car and that car died and now she’s got a new car and I’m like, oh, she hasn’t bought something for that car in a while. We still set up the rules to target at three months after the fact because that’s the history. This is where AI might be able to look at those other data points and go, okay, she’s browsing this site, she’s browsing this site, she’s doing this. You know what? Let’s wait two more months and we’ll target her with something else or something like that. So I could see something like that. But I mean it’s just kind of building upon segmentation engines. I think more than anything,
Emma:
Anyone that’s listening to this, Greg will like baseball things in his subject lines. Adam would like some numbers. Yes, please. And me puns. Yeah, no. Okay. So I have one last one for you, Greg. What was the one question that we didn’t ask you that you wanted to or share with the world?
Greg:
So not a question. I would say, if I’m thinking back on this conversation we had today, we’re talking about automation, we’re talking about the complexities and simplicity at the same time of segmentation. It can be both. For a lot of people, we talk about people having very limited time to do a lot of things with. I would tell people that the conversation might sound difficult. It sounds like doing something new is challenging and it is really not. So email can really be as simple and basic as you want it to be, and it could still be effective that way. So we talk about, say you are a brand, you don’t have an automation or you have one and you want to make it better. You can do that when you build a message or a second message. It doesn’t have to be the best message in the world.
Think about the MVP version of things, right? Can we send the MVP version, which is better than nothing and generate revenue in the background. So that’s the one thing I always tell people because it can be overwhelming, especially if you want to up it or you’re just not doing a lot of it and you want to do it more, just do it right, do it simply. You can always make it better, especially from the automation standpoint. This is the one thing where, again, I like to do it, but shamelessly plug, omni send. So we talked about automations there. We talk about small mid-size businesses. We are friendly for you. We actually templatize all the automations too. So if you don’t know where to start and you want to do a browser abandonment, you literally just click the template and hit create and it creates the flow with the best practice timing rules built in. You can customize ’em whenever you want, change the messages whenever you want, but they’re there for you. So you can literally get these things going in two minutes and then just improve ’em over time. So I know a lot of we talk about sounds complicated, it sounds overwhelming, but it’s really not. And I always tell people if you have challenges or you want reach out to me, I’m an open book and I’ll help guide you. But it does not have to be difficult and it’s not difficult.
Adam:
Nice. I like it. At the end of the day, just do it. Get out there, try it. Thank you so much, Greg for sharing your wisdom with us. So I’m excited that you guys are able to share your knowledge with us. I’m going to have high expectations that the emails coming into my inbox are going to be better and better and my click through rate, my open rate will be better because you guys are doing the good work, I think to help improve the state of email marketing and SMS marketing for everyone out there. So thank you for the work you do. As we wrap up, where can people find you? Where do they want to learn more about Omnis? Send about you? About baseball? Yeah, tell us about on your socials.
Greg:
So I’ll start with Omnisend, so omnisend.com. All the social handles are just slash omnisend. We’re pretty much all over the place, including TikTok. So myself, I’m on LinkedIn, fairly uncommon name in the US so if you misspell it, it’ll auto correct you. I’m on X @whatsgregdoing.
Adam:
What’s Greg doing? Okay.
Greg:
LinkedIn and I dunno, I’m out there, just find me. But as I mentioned, I’m an open book, just feel free to reach out to me. I’d be more than happy to chat with you.
Adam:
Alright, well thank you so much and for Adam and Emma here at Woo Biz Chat, that’s all we have for today. We look forward to another podcast here very soon. So we hope you guys stay safe and yeah, just to finish this out, just do it. Get in there, try it and we wish you all the best success. Alright, bye. Take care everybody.
 

Thanks to our Pod Friends for their support

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: GatherPress, Organizing WordPress Events with Mike, Mervin and Patricia

Do the Woo podcast shows are made possible by support from the WordPress community. If you would like to sponsor The WordPress Way, contact us for more info.

GatherPress is a plugin that has been proposed to replace Meetup.com as a solution for organizing WordPress events.

Listen in to The WordPress Way as Mike Auteri, Mervin Hernandez, and Patricia Brun Torre discuss the development and future of the GatherPress plugin.

The plugin, which has been in development for four years, is designed to improve the experience of organizing and attending WordPress meetups. The group discusses the importance of making the plugin accessible, scalable, and easy to use.

They also highlight the potential for the plugin to be used beyond the WordPress community, as it is open source and customizable. Currently they are working on refining the plugin, addressing bugs, and adding new features. Feedback and contributions from the wider community will help to grow this open source option.


Show Transcript

Mike:
So my name is Mike Auteri. I’m a director of engineering at Penske Media Corporation and I’ve been involved with GatherPress for four years, about four years, but we kind of really got serious about it two years ago, I would say is really the first timeline of where things of what GatherPress looks like now is. That was kind of the beginning of where it is. I’m super happy to be here and I’m going to pass it over to Mervin.

Mervin:
Well thanks everyone. My name’s Mervin. I have been a long time community member at WordPress NYC, presently in Nashville, and today I serve as the tech lead at Savage Ventures as well as some other projects I GatherPress among them. And yes, I’ve been with the project, I think just about from its inception. I can remember the conversations early on where you were telling us how you came up with the idea and what the objectives were and all the way through to putting some code on paper. And here we are today, we have an MVP, we have some good next goals and we have a game plan for what we’d like to bring to the community. So yeah, it’s just a fruition of being a member of the community and being involved and looking out for opportunities of how we can apply our open source in many places. So yeah, excited to chat.

Patricia:
I’m Patricia BT from Geneva in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I mostly contribute to the community team by doing different things. I organize the local meetups here in Geneva. I co-organize the WordCamps in Switzerland and this year, I’m also a WordCamp Europe co-organizer and I’m an event supporter previously called WordCamp mentor and I’m taking part in the second cohort of the mentorship project. And finally I try to attend the meetings of the Sustainability team and the DEIB working group. And now Mike, would you like to tell us how it all began?

Mike:
Sure. So I mean we thought about, I’ve heard the idea before, well before we even decided that, hey, this is a good idea, but I think one of the big things to think about is for a long time WordPress was very much needed meetup because that was the only way for discoverability. Once the dashboard widget came out, I think that was really the tipping point of where an idea, this made a lot more sense. I was driving with Cameron. We decided last minute to go to WordCampUS in Nashville and if any of you are familiar or not familiar with the US, New Jersey is very far from Tennessee, so it was a 14 hour drive. So we left in the middle of the night, I think three o’clock in the morning and we take his car and drive that 14 hours just switching off driving. There was a bunch of conversations, but one of the conversations was how much we just didn’t like the meetup platform and for various reasons, I mean it was, I guess fine, it did its work, but especially I think at that time the user interface was all over the place. It kept doing redesigns and couldn’t figure itself out.

I mean, Patricia, you’ve seen it. There’s lots of bugs that just pop up randomly and we have very little control over it. We had a meetup for a long time and we had a WordCamp and there was getting people in our meetup to know that we have a WordCamp was a challenge, which shouldn’t be the case. The things that we have on our meetup site should be able to promote all the other things that great things we do and all the other great meetups that are around us. So we had this conversation and came up with the name GatherPress. Cameron may have actually grabbed the domain while we are at WordCamp. I don’t know. But yeah, that was kind of the beginning of that conversation. That was, I believe December 20. So it was late 2018. We kind of sat on it for a while and then at some point I just created a repo and like, all right, I’m starting on this. And it was almost a year later, so just got the basics together of what this plugin would be. I forget when you joined Mervin, why don’t you tell us a little bit about when you got to the project? I know you got on early, I just don’t remember the exact time.

Mervin:
Yeah, I can just remember you starting the repo and starting to work on it. I don’t know that there was a specific date that I just meshed into it. It was, Hey, I started on this. Let’s have weekly meetings and kind of keep chipping at it. And that’s kind of what we did. And I think I’ve joined probably 75-80% of the meetings early on. We talked about what were the pain points, what did we want to bring to the community? And I think you pointed out just some of the common things like bugs and just the lack of control. And those are all things that we just kind of huddled around. How do we address things, how do we address that thing? And I think we’ve made some really pointed contributions to addressing those key core items in the MVP of GatherPress. But no, I don’t think there was really a date when I joined.

Mike:
You just started showing up.

Mervin:
Exactly. You Jeff, Paul, just let us know when you can join.

Mike:
No, that was before Jeff. That was before Jeff. Jeff came a couple years later. Paul was there early. Yeah, you’re right. So yeah, it was mostly early on. It was me, you, Paul, Dan was there a little bit hanging out and yeah, that’s what I meant. Dan Griffin. Yeah, I don’t remember who else. There was probably a couple people that showed up and left. And the other thing with GatherPress, one of the reasons why it took so long is that we are all very busy people and we’d pick it up off the shelf, start working on it really hard for a month and put it back up on the shelf for another couple months, pull it back down to the shelf and there was a lot of that until about I would say a year and a half, two years ago, or I would say a year and a half ago, we, or at least I and you and others were like, okay, we can’t just keep putting this up on the shelf and take it get down again. We need to actually get through it, but it’s a journey. There was a lot to build.

Mervin:
I think all throughout the materializing of the idea. Not only did we keep tinkering with it in conversations, but we kept touching people in the community and leadership and even sponsors. I remember discussing this with some sponsors about, Hey, how do we get more involved in helping you guys host events? How can we do more things in events and promoted and organized and RSVP things? So I think all throughout the journey of the concept and then you starting to work on it and a couple of people coming into and contributing into it, we kept putting feelers out there to the community team and to sponsors. What do you want in an event management that is for the community, by the community? We’ve talked a lot about Central and WordCamp camptix, how there are certain things that it does really, really well and we wish we had the same control or influence over the general dashboard widget and the whole meetup aspect of our community. So yes, it was a couple of people chipping away at it, but we also had input and guidance from many people along the way that kept giving us good direction towards the MVP.

Mike:
Absolutely. I remember those. A lot of those early meetings. I want to include Patricia more in this conversation because she’s been silent patiently listening to us reminisce about the history of GatherPress.

Patricia:
And I can understand also that we have all gone through a pandemic, so of course all meetups were canceled, all events, all WordCamps, and I was not there in your team, but I mean it must have been like, what’s the point now? for now on hold, I guess I’m not sure.

Mike:
I still had a meetup going on during the pandemic. Mervin, I think you may have too. Did you manage a meetup during the pandemic or no?

Mervin:
Very few. When I was in New York, I was still in New York at the time, me and Steve, we hosted a couple of online events. I didn’t officially, I was slated to lead WordCamp New York City 2020. I didn’t officially declare we’re going virtual, so we just kind of transitioned our monthly meetups to be virtual and that I think many people in the community will echo the sentiment, that idea and that methodology kind of fizzled out after the first few months. All of the camps went virtual, all of the meetups went virtual and we all realized at some point we need in-person connections at some point. It’s good to have virtual events and fun hackathons and regular meetups online are great, but eventually we do want to have it face-to-face break bread and have snacks and help each other on their laptops.

Mike:
Patricia, were you doing any virtual meetups with your groups or did you just press pause during Covid?

Patricia:
We tried twice, but there was not a lot of people and the first time we had a technical issue and then people didn’t show up. It was sad because I was the lead organizer of WordCamp Geneva 2020 in March, and end of February, I had to cancel before it was mandatory to cancel in my country and I got people say “why do you cancel? We can still meet if we’re less than 1000”. I said let’s see in two weeks. But yeah, and after that we tried to stay connected through online meetups, but it’s not the same. You do not have the snacks and the hugs.

Mike:
So we all have that in common. We were all lead organizers of a WordCamp in 2020 that got canceled.
I was months away. You were WordCamp in New York 2020 and you were slated for the fall. We always talk to you because we want to make sure because I’m WordCamp Montclair and I was lead organizer for 2020 and since the proximity is very close, we try to be one in spring, well, we say whatever New York wants to do with the opposite.

Mervin:
WordCamp NYC 2020 had the venue contract in hand the beginning of March, which is when everything started to point in the direction of a lockdown. And yeah, I was just days away from potentially costing us quite a bit of money because I know of other conferences, like medical conferences in Long Island that were in April that canceled and they lost quite a bit of money because of the cancellation clauses of March 2020, days away.

Mike:
We already gave money, but we were able to, we had a good relationship with MSU, and they were able to hold on. We were able to apply that when we did have our conference in 2022. That’s good. Yeah, so that worked out well.

Patricia:
Yeah, I’m not sure, maybe one of you remember before the pandemic on meetup.com, we could not add online events, only in-person events, right? and that’s what I liked also when I saw GatherPress two months ago, you can choose either in-person or online and you just paste the link to the online meeting.

Mike:
Or both. Yeah, so we have blocks that allow it to be both. I believe the way Meetup works is this is one or the other and granted I think there’s ways around, you could always post something here or whatever, but you can have both an in-person place and an online and a virtual place in case you are putting on a meetup that has both a virtual aspect and an in-person aspect. So I was cognizant of that when we built GatherPress or while we were building GatherPress and I’m like, this seems like a limitation that doesn’t need to be there in Meetup. Why can’t you have a venue and an online link? We also put in, I noticed this on Meetup also and I noticed it in our GatherPress huddles that I would post a link in there and much like the way Meetup worked, it’s like if you say you’re going, the link becomes available, if not, the link is hidden and that was an apples to apples with Meetup. I changed that because I was finding I’d post something and people would just jump on the Zoom link. I’m like, I don’t want people jumping on a Zoom link on a Wednesday when the thing’s on a Friday. So I added the feature to have it only enable five minutes before the meeting and have it make it available and then once the meeting’s over, it’s disabled again. So it’s only open for that. I mean it’s just another way of just, it’s not that people are going to do something like most people aren’t going to do something malicious or anything. I mean obviously people do because we’ve all gone through that, but it just adds a little bit of like, Hey, this meeting’s happening, then this link will be there. Then you don’t need to click on it now.

Mervin:
Less time. Less time for somebody to just grab the link and go program something.

Mike:
And it just makes it just easier. It’s an easier flow I think it makes it more able to be understood rather than confusing being like why is this link active now? The meetup’s not happening till Friday. We should also mention that for anybody listening that if you do want to join us in our huddles, what we call’em GatherPress weekly huddles. They happen every Friday at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

Patricia:
Sorry, which is 4:00 PM UTC.

Mike:
Yes. Thank you Patricia for, she internationalizes all my speaking and everything. So yes, and every Friday. So if you go to gatherpress.org spelled exactly the way it sounds, G-A-T-H-E-R-P-R-E-S-S .org, you can see our upcoming events. It is powered by GatherPress surprise surprise. So if you do RSVP, you are using GatherPress and everybody’s welcome. We will all be there if you want to pick our brains or talk to us, but we’re always looking to have new people join us and get new opinions, new ways of thinking. I’ll even say when Patricia joined, I am monolingual, I speak English only and a couple other languages very poorly, but she’s really, really helped us make GatherPress less Americanized, I guess, which is something when you’re trying to build a global plugin is something you need and helped us translate. The first thing you did was translate the plugin the French.

Patricia:
Before that, I checked if all your text strings were correctly internationalized and created the .pot file for all translators to be able to translate. And when it’ll be on the official WordPress repository, then it’ll be available to be translated on translate.wordress.org. So almost 200, I think, languages. And yes, I translated to French and I discovered things that I didn’t know about blocks.

Mike:
You and I both

Patricia: yeah, about .json files and I was used to .po/.mo files and now I know there are .json files for blocks, for the text in blocks.

Mike:
We try to make GatherPress cutting edge.

Mervin:
And I think there’s a great way for you to feature your other contributions, Patricia, because since you’ve come onto the project, you’ve definitely accelerated us getting out and presenting something more publicly. So the proposal was an excellent exercise that you led and you dragged us through all of the editing and really good composition there. And now we have something presented for the community to consume and digest and people to see what’s been going on with this MVP. So can you tell us about what motivated you to really help us just get the word out there and where do you see our next milestone with the project? What’s a point that we can come to where we receive all of these feedback, we touch some of the community leadership? Where do you see us going to next?

Patricia:
Yeah, so to reply to your first question, when I joined I saw that you were very advanced on building it as I’m not a developer, I was thinking maybe I have nothing to add, but I did. And during one of the huddles you say, we need to propose that, so we gathered all the points, the features and what we want to say. And I put that in French in written form in French, and I translated with ChatGPT and DeepL and I asked even after that, a friend, a British friend to be sure my English was good enough. And then we reached out to a lot of people from the community and that’s maybe my force that I know a lot of people and it’s easy for me to meet people and make friends when I’m at WordCamps. So I thought of a lot of people to send this link to the draft that you and me, Mervin, we have made that draft and we had a lot of feedback that ended in the final draft, I mean for the proposal. So that was very good because there were things that I didn’t know, for example, that meetup.com had lost two years of statistical data. I didn’t know that.

And Victor Ramirez wrote about that and I knew about the price that Meetup.com is costing to WPCS, I mean Central, WordPress Community Support. So all of this ended in the proposal that we published on the 22nd of January and yeah, I see a lot of great feedback now in the comments,n the comments. And please anyone who is listening that do not hesitate to comment because we had just today a comment from a person who attend meetups, she’s in Catalonia, and she wrote a comment like: What? it didn’t exist before? We have to solve that! Because you were mentioning bugs in Meetup.com, but even if it was a perfect platform, it’s still a proprietary place. So I’m not sure how many people say… I saw, how do you say? that traffic to meetup.com was 60% coming from the US so maybe it’s more about discoverability in the US but here in Europe, like a few years ago, people who were going on meetup.com, I talk for my city in Geneva, where mostly the international people, the people who speak English only and work in international organizations and go there to the yoga class on Meetup and not very often discovered the WordPress meetup Geneva, we have 800 members and I think 750 never came. And on the opposite, there has been people who discovered our events in the dashboard widget and then they came, maybe they were not registered or they registered on Meetup and they said: “I don’t understand, I thought I was on WordPress and why did I have to register on that thing? What is it Meetup?” That was more the kind of experience that I had. Yeah, when someone told me, maybe it was in October 2023, last year, three months ago “you know there are some people who something maybe I should introduce to them”. I said “yeah, well I’m not a developer, they are doing, why should I?” And then there was that December 7th when I posted my rant on Slack and the day after you said, come join!

Mike:
The rant. Heard around the world.

Patricia:
Yeah, it has not even been two months now, like early December. We are early February 2024. So yes, we did a lot of things in two months. Right.

Mike:
Yeah!

Mervin:
Absolutely.

Mike:
One of the big things that I want to still bring up while we have others listening to this, the areas, Patricia, you brought up something really interesting. You’re like, this thing’s far along, it’s developers, I’m not sure how to contribute. And once we started talking, we figured out a lot of areas where you were able to contribute and really help us drive this project forward. Other areas where I noticed especially is getting someone to join us and look at our project from an accessibility eye. We haven’t had someone now, I think between the three of us, we all have basic knowledge of how to build an accessible plugin, but having someone, especially when we are looking at creating a community project that is for everybody, we need to make sure that our plugin is accessible and I’ve done my best to do that, but I am not an accessibility expert. So where else, and I’m going to put this out to both Patricia and Mervin. Where else in the project do you think, man, if we just had somebody that knew a lot about this, that could really help us position our plugin better in front of the community?

Mervin:
Sure. Well, let me start by giving you some props because since your background is with big humongous VIP websites, I think you’ve laid a pretty good foundation for it to scale. So I think thankfully we have a lot of good pillars and a good foundation to let this plugin be poked at scale. You’ve got unit tests in there. We have a lot of good groundwork that has been solid. Areas for accessibility, I’ll definitely keep that one high up on the priorities list because myself, as a visually impaired person, my main accessibility use case is magnification and for my use case Windows and the browser magnification helps me just go from my whatever, 90% vision to a 100% usable and comfortable vision level. I know that’s just one use case among many with screen readers, different types of screen, colors, contrast, ratios and other accessible tools that are necessary. So certainly accessibility. I think Patricia has also laid the groundwork for translation now, so we have that ability to translate it to many other languages.

I’m looking forward to feedback that’s going to come from the community for what areas we might be missing, but I feel pretty confident that we have an MVP that’s pretty robust and that meets the primary objectives of this tool. Scalability, security I think are good, accessibility, does need to be a bit more polished and tested and just poked at to ensure that we meet critical objectives there. I think design wise, it’s functional. We’ve observed WordPress and Gutenberg design standards kind of in a vanilla format so folks can adapt it to their appropriate branding. So I think we’re in a really good spot. Functionality is where I expect we’re going to get a lot of feedback for functionality, which is really, really broad, but we’ll look at what to incorporate in the base plugin and then what to incorporate via addons. And we’ve talked about SSO, we’ve talked about tickets and we already talked ticket plugins fairly well. But yeah, that’s my thoughts.

Patricia:
I have two things to add. The first one is about accessibility. I reached out to a friend, Anne-Mieke Bovelett, who is an accessibility expert, and her reply that she gave us, it was that we should ask someone who is really living a disability and to test for us. So let’s hope someone who is listening could join and test for us. Another thing I wanted to add is that I have been following all the comments on the social media about the proposal and there has been a few misconceptions. One person said “I have not, I’m an co-organizer, I’m non-sponsored and I don’t want to spend time or to lose time to self-host”. So we have to be very clear that for the community it would not be self-hosted. The proposal is to hopefully be on the wordpress.org network, like the WordCamps, like the new events.wordpress.org.

So this was the first misconception and another replied to me on that network with a letter, a single letter, and that person said “Why do you say it would be better than sign up to Meetup? So we would’ve to sign up to GatherPress”. So again, no, it’s if you have wordpress.org account and the pilot program is accepted and run, so that would be your wordpress.org account. And for all the people at the meetups who are still not on wordpress.org, that could bring a lot of new people who would discover other events, who might potentially join as contributors to the project also. That’s the thing, but at the same time, you can self-host and actually my friend Michelle from here in Switzerland, Michelle Bulloch, with her family, she organizes concerts, classical concerts, and she has just installed a version of GatherPress on her personal website and that’s just amazing. She didn’t need the RSVP feature. So it’s very simple, just remove the block, very easy, so it’s very… can adapt and it use the blocks and very well, and it’s so much looking like Core WordPress, you are not lost with some plugins, we see a lot of different design you don’t feel in a WordPress dashboard. Here it’s just like if it was so, I don’t know the word for that, “ingrained”?

Mike:
Very cool. Yeah, I’m really excited about that. Well, for two reasons. A, it’s self-hosted, and B, it’s not a WordPress meetup. So just kind of seeing when our envision is GatherPress is a plugin for the community by the community with a roadmap that is designed by the WordPress community. However, it can be used by anyone. It is open source. So if you have, as Patricia’s friend is, a choir meetup or a choir gathering that you want to use this plugin for and not spend 20 something dollars a month on meetup fees, you can absolutely do that. I find it very interesting, especially she doesn’t use the RSVP feature, so it makes me start thinking a little bit now my technical brain’s working like, all right, I got to add some settings to make that not available in some cases and stuff some I’ve been putting, I dunno, you two been seeing I’ve been putting in tickets like crazy last night when I came home from Palm Springs with Covid, it’s very minor, but I’m still isolating myself from the family, so I’m just in my office working on GatherPress.

Mervin:
Good motivation

Mike:
Yeah, motivation

Patricia:
On my project site, which is not about WordPress, I mean my idea was to add a form, a lead form instead of the RSVP, for people to register to my mailing list when they register for an event. So yeah, we can do anything because it’s a plugin, it’s open source and you are already talking about addon plugins that can be added and anyone can add features with addons that would hook on it.

Mervin:
Yeah, of course. We’ve got the desire, one of the big desired end goals is for the community to embrace, GatherPress and for it to run probably parallel for some time with Meetup and then ultimately for the community to just leverage an open source solution for all of these needs. But right alongside that is this is an open source plugin. It has the same capabilities, it operates with the same four freedoms that WordPress does. So even outside of the WordPress and tech community, if there’s a use case for an event management application that is simple to use and customizable, this is right up there as meeting that need.

Mike:
That brings up when we were discussing, and it was actually, I had it in the back of my mind and I think I brought it up to both of you when I decided, hey, I think our first companion plugin needs to be a meetup importer because I sent the plugin to Michelle Frechette on Twitter like, “Hey Michelle, would you mind testing this out?” This was early on this before the proposal, this is when we were just kind of chatting with friends of the project, friends of ours and friends of the project that we know would be kind to us. Mervin and I had not really shown it to a lot of people yet, and she’s like, “Hey, how do I import from my meetup stuff?” I’m like, that’s funny because you can’t, but we were planning on putting a companion plugin and I put the repo together.

I just added the setting that can add the API token to it, but that’s going to be our first companion plugin to GatherPress. One of the big things I look for in GatherPress for the community is removing as much friction as possible for organizers and for attendees. And one of those things is how can we automate some of these things? How can we as if the pilot program is running things in tandem, I don’t want people to have to go and input, do more administrative work. And I think some of the things that people had mentioned in our proposal, I know one I saw one in particular is like, “I’m a meetup organizer, we just went through hell with Covid trying to do things and I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do any more work than I’m already doing. No one’s going to do it”. And I get that sentiment as a meetup organizer that also went through Covid, that did meetups through Covid and then is now trying to bring meetups back in person with my community. I understand being overworked and exhausted, so doing our best to transition from one to the other and removing a lot of that friction and extra work or making that extra work as minimal as possible is front of mind of this project and on this team.

Mervin:
I think along the roadmap of our desired integration with the community would be likely to get merged into Central. There’s no SSO that’s necessary. This happens inside of .org. So the same way that we do Camptix and other access for meetup organizers and camp organizers, but companion plugins are one of the ways that we’re going to roadmap some of the requests we’re likely to receive.

Mike:
It’s important for the GatherPress project and when we were thinking about or the way we think about things, and it’s the same way the WordPress project thinks about things with WordPress, what things belong in the core plugin, right? So when ideas come out, I mean it’s front of mind. Is this a core feature of the plugin or is this something that is a companion? So even something like a meetup importer. Patricia, I’ll go back to your friend as an example. If she’s just standing up a choir site and using GatherPress, I mean she may have had a meetup group, but she may just be starting from scratch and she doesn’t need all that technical debt that’s in there or extra, well, it’s not technical debt, but it’s extra functionality that’s kind of muddying up the admin for a feature that a good amount of people are not going to need.

So things like that. Also things around, especially very early on Mervin, when we were talking early on the project, we’re like, we are going to do something with BuddyPress. BuddyPress is another popular community project. It has a lot of functionality that GatherPress can leverage to build events but also build a community. So I would see when if we put this on a WordPress network that BuddyPress would also be part of that infrastructure of GatherPress and building a companion plugin to happily marry the features of GatherPress into BuddyPress through filters or different actions, different APIs that BuddyPress offers around, even stuff like notifications of emails or notifications about events. We would really dive into that and build out those connections and make it all integrate very nicely. But having that even that as a companion plugin.

Patricia:
As a side note, yeah, I love BuddyPress actually and I use it on my upcoming membership site so that plus GatherPress will be amazing and yeah, I love BuddyPress and I know they need more people in the team, like BBPress by the way, and they need for documentation on the BuddyPress project. Anyone is interested, you can join the BuddyPress channel in Slack. And I say hello to my friend Mathieu (iMath) who I can see, commit, commit, commit to BuddPress for like almost 2 decades. Integrate both will be great because I can imagine the tabs you have profile, sites and stuff. It could be like all the events you have attended.

Mike:
Yeah, I could see a lot of cross-pollination between the projects too, which I think would be kind of interesting if we have a new shiny WordPress network that we’re using for meetups, it could really, if we’re using GatherPress, if we’re using BuddyPress, if we’re using BBPress, you have all these different people that are really interested in what’s going on here and contributing to all the different projects where needed to support this new thing that’s being powered by all these great projects that the WordPress community has built over the years. It’s a real testament to this community that people can get together, have an idea and then execute on it, and everybody’s contributing in different ways where their strengths are, where they can find their ability to contribute. It’s just an amazing, amazing experience.

Patricia:
Nice. I also want to say to people who hesitate to join a team, and I should know because last year I was in a panel at WordCamp Europe like “How to contribute to the WordPress project without knowing how to code”. So I should have known better that I could bring some value to a team of developers.

Mervin:
We see, that’s not uncommon in WordPress in general because everybody sees WordPress. Oh yeah, content management system and open source community of developers is perhaps the default assumption, but no, there’s design, there’s meta, there’s community, there’s translation. So thank you Patricia for still poking in and taking a look behind the curtain.

Patricia:
Yeah, I’m happy to contribute to community for the WordPress project as a whole and to have joined the team here for some outreach, very happy. And you have been very welcoming. And I have to say that the weekly huddles are also very friendly. I made new friends, I begin to know about American football now.

Mike:
We have two Buffalo Bills fans, myself included on that.

Patricia:
And the only other team I knew about was the Jets because of Gary Vee. So I don’t know that much because for me, football is played with the feet and it’s what you call soccer and yeah, we have also people from India in the team and yeah, it was nice talking with one of the Indian team member the other day in the meeting talking about this country that I visited when I was young, younger. And yeah, it’s nice to, that’s what I find also in the WordPress community as a whole, to make friends from the whole world.

Mervin:
I was speaking with some non-techie friends recently and they asked me, I was like, where do you go to many WordPress events? And the people is absolutely core to the community and I get so energized. That’s the best way I could describe it to non WordPress people was I just get energized every time I go to a WordPress event, I see some people I know, some new people, we talk shop and we just otherwise enjoy each other’s company and we’re all very dedicated and very passionate about WordPress, about code, about development, good software, good service. So it’s really energizing to see folks come in and out of projects and introduce new ideas and new cultures. It’s really good. It’s really energizing.

Patricia:
Because I was lucky, honored to be invited for the Community Summit. So that’s why I was in the US.

Mike:
We tried the last time, 2022 was pretty successful. We were at the community table and got a few folks to contribute to GatherPress. We reached out and said: Hey, we have this project. This was early, like I said, 2022, so it was about two years ago or a year and a half ago or whenever that was in that’s that was. I think the point where the project was a little bit more stable and it was getting closer to that MVP. We had some cool contributions done on that day. As Mervin said, he was kind of there for the GatherPress. We were trying to put something together on Contributor Day for GatherPress. I unfortunately wasn’t able to make US that year. I can’t remember if Meghan was able to make it or not or if she was able to make it that day, but it all fell to Mervin had an emergency, so it didn’t really come to fruition there. I’m planning on going to WordCamp US in Portland this year, so I’m hoping that we’re able to get a good Contributor day to GatherPress. That’s months from now who knows what the project’s going to look like. I’m hoping that we are moving forward with things there.

Mervin:
That’s a fantastic wrap up Mike. So what’s going to happen between now and Portland?

Mike:
So what’s going to hit between now and Portland?

Patricia:
There will be WordCamp Europe!

Mike:
There will be WordCamp Europe and I don’t think I’m going to get my company to pay for me to go to that. It’s also right around WordCamp Montclair and I kind of have to go to that one.

Patricia:
But I will be there.

Mike:
You will be there.

Patricia:
Yeah, I’m a co organizer for WordCamp Europe this year, so I will try to free some time for the Contributor day and do some more outreach.

Mike:
We’ll see if we can get more Europeans to join us. And so you’re not solo. You could have other folks that are more ingrained in the project by the time WordCamp Europe comes around and we can have a bunch of people pushing for contributions.

Patricia:
We have one who joined some of our meetings and translated and yes, let’s hope for more people. Yeah, it’ll be that.

Mike:
I’ll be hearing in the States helping you all out. I can jump on a Zoom or whatever or just read some pull requests. I’m more than happy to be involved in the WordCamp Europe Contributor day from my place in New Jersey. But yeah, so that’s the first big one. I think there’s a little bit more, there’s more coordination with the meta team. I’ve been going through a bunch of tickets trying to clean up some more code. Like I said, some of this code’s four years old, so some of it was, I look back at it, I’m like, oh, that wasn’t a good idea. So I’m rewriting pieces of it, hopefully not introducing new and interesting bugs. But we’ll find out. Jeff and Bill have been hard at work with that one ticket where we’re able to remove attendees. So they’ve been doing, there’s all these little things. I think it’s a bunch of little things now. It’s no real big huge things we need to tackle for the MVP now. It’s a lot of cleanup and a couple other little features that people have been kind of chatting about that we’re like, actually, we got some time. We can put this in.

Mervin:
And listening too. We definitely want to encourage folks to take a look at the proposal, take a look at the project and gatherpress.org if you’re so inclined and you’d like to look at a GitHub. We have a project and we have a list of issues that we have on the radar. So take a look at the project at large and wherever you would like to contribute, we welcome all new people that want to get involved.

Mike:
Absolutely.

Patricia:
Yes. And looking forward also for the training team, the learn.wordpress.org to have the evidence if/when, so that’s also a very exciting thing. Maybe it’s time to wrap up before the top of the hour, so maybe where we can find everything about GatherPress, and then about you, Mike, you Mervin, and about me. So yes, you mentioned GitHub, gatherpress.org.

Mervin:
I think gatherpress.org is a pretty good hub for all of the things. So we talk about the project there, we post our Friday gatherings. There’s links to the GitHub repository. There’s links to contact Mike and myself if you want to be added to our Slack group. There’s a feedback form.

Patricia:
A nice video from you as well, now, very nice.

Mike:
Oh, there’s a video, Patricia, you put together for just kind of a basic demo of how to get through GatherPress. That was great.

Patricia:
Yeah, basic demo, but Mervin did something great explaining why we did the proposal and it was really good.

Mervin:
Yeah, we don’t have a lot of social presence, but I think we have a little bit of social, so you can follow us there. But by all means, the proposal, the community channels are definitely the way to let us know how you’re using it, what features we need to consider putting in next.

Patricia:
And where can we find you besides GatherPress, Mervin.

Mervin:
For me, mervinhernandez.com, that’s got my links to all of the things I’m involved in and my socials. And I also frequent the WordPress Make Slack and PostStatus as well. So I’m available on both of those.

Patricia:
Nice. And Mike.

Mike:
mikeauteri.com. It’s a very no frills WordPress website and a blog I barely update, but you can find all my socials on there as well.

Patricia:
And about me, patriciabt.com. But if you are into WordPress is better to add forward slash WordPress, so patriciabt.com/wordpress and on the contact page, all the link to the social, my social profiles. So thank you everyone, and we hope to see you all coming to our huddles. And bye-Bye. Thank you.

Mike:
Bye everybody.

Episode Summary

In this engaging podcast episode, the team behind GatherPress, comprising Mike Auteri, Mervin Hernandez, and Patricia Brun Torre, delved into the development and future plans for their innovative GatherPress plugin. As they reminisced about the plugin’s origins and the challenges encountered during the development process, the trio highlighted the pivotal role of community input and contributions in shaping the project. They discussed the significance of accessibility, scalability, and ease of use in shaping the plugin’s design and functionality, and emphasized the project’s aim to not only benefit the WordPress community, but to also cater to a wider audience by offering a user-friendly, open-source event management solution.

The team expertly shared insights into the unique features of GatherPress, such as the ability to seamlessly integrate in-person and online events, setting the stage for an engaging open discussion to gather valuable feedback and contributions from the wider community.

Throughout the conversation, the team also touched upon the pivotal role of companion plugins, the roadmap for future integrations, and collaborated on addressing misconceptions and concerns related to the proposal for GatherPress. They expressed their excitement about the upcoming WordCamp Europe and potential Contributor Day, and extended warm invitations to the community to join their weekly huddles to contribute, provide feedback, and help shape the future of GatherPress.

With a strong emphasis on fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment, this episode successfully showcased the passion, expertise, and dedication of the GatherPress team, promising an exciting roadmap ahead for their open-source event management plugin.

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Learn WordPress Product Marketing Deeply with Noel Tock

Show Transcript

Transcript
Dave:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the emerging tech flavor of Do the Woo. I am Dave Locke. And with me this time we have Noel Tock from Human Made and also Noel from Rescuing Dogs in Ukraine. So why don’t we start where you are? No, which is in Kharkiv. Tell us when you got there, what you’ve been up to and what it’s like, and then maybe we can fit some WordPress stuff in at the end.
Noel:
Yeah, absolutely. That sounds good. So yeah, I’m on mid sabbatical at the moment from Human Made just because there’s a bit of an emergency sort of crisis out here with the stuff we’re doing and the work we’re doing. But to go back to the beginning, let’s go way back. I was at Workcamp Norway and met this guy called Espin at the first one, and he was building the largest fitness blog website in Norway, massive duties twice my size, and I meet him first year, I meet him the second year, meet him the third year, and we’re at this after party and the after party music’s down, it’s kind of very quiet and he’s like, Hey, you want to go club? And I’m like, hell yeah, I want to go club. And we go straight to the club, literally he’s got the table set up and everything.
He’s got his friends there, his business partners, and at the time these guys were like five, six guys or so. And they turned that into a 650 person WooCommerce business being the largest sports supplements distributor retail store or whatever online in Norway during that evening. Somewhere at one or 2:00 AM I talked to one of the other guys called Fred, and we hit it off within two hours. And then he says, Hey, do you want to crash at my place for a couple months? And I’m like, yeah. And that’s just a nomadic way of things. And before you know it, we’re coworking, we’re doing things, they’re on WordPress and Woo. Anyway, so all these things work together, but fast forward to the beginning of the full scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine. Fred, he’s watching TV and he’s seeing distraught animals on tv, running around, not knowing what to do, whatever.

So long story short, he jumps in a car and drives down here, not really knowing anybody, a few contacts here and there, but builds up a charity, which is amazing. And I joined I’d say nine months after or something on the eight months after on the tech side, just doing a website and everything. And then last March I was supposed to have hip surgery, doctor canceled that. I called Fred. I’m like, where are you? He’s like, I’m in Norway leaving to go to Ukraine. I’m like, okay, pick me up in Warsaw. I’ll fly there. And yeah, haven’t looked back since. Been in and out a few times. I’ve spent half my time, I’d say all in once March comes up. And yeah, it’s been an incredibly humbling experience. It’s been very inspiring because people are obviously working together between military civilian volunteers to keep this whole country afloat.

And our little part of this world is that we’ve produced 245,000 kilos of dog food last year and distributed that to the occupied areas. The occupied areas were areas that were occupied by Russia and then won back by Ukraine. And these areas are pretty messed up. Everything is broken, supply chain’s gone, all that kind of stuff. So we help out there with dog and cat food. And then we also do evacuations from the front lines and other kind of hostile environments where the larger charities certainly won’t go. So on Sunday we were two kilometers away from the Russian border, so that’s definitely a no man’s land kind of area, but the dogs there had had no real social contact in two years or whatever now. So some pretty important cases I guess. And last year we evacuated and re-homed 500 dogs. And it’s nice because the website’s on WordPress obviously.

But yeah, I think what it highlights for me is in many ways WordPress is necessary technology in this world. We live in a quite ugly time right now between highly polarizing politics, a lot of conflicts going on around the world. We had the kind of boom and bust post covid stock markets, so we’re seeing SaaS companies shut down and then maybe your data’s locked in a weird way and all that kind of stuff. So I think there’s a lot of arguments right now where WordPress has its place in a very large way and also shows you how it’s withstood time over 20 years to still be reliable and be larger than ever.
Dave:
Yeah, I mean first thanks for going over and doing that work because is doing what I can to support you makes me feel like I’m doing at least something about all the awful stuff that’s happening over there. And I’m not as mobile as you are, and I also don’t think I could deal with the weather, although like super trivial point, it sounds bitter.
Noel:
Well, it makes two of us because I have rain arts, so as soon as I’m anywhere minus two, minus three, my hands are white and I have two toe warmers on either side of my foot warmers in my pocket. It’s a battle to say the least. I’ve seen my hands all colors at this point being here the last couple of weeks.
Dave:
So I want to pick up that point about there being a place for WordPress still and it being such, I guess longstanding technology. And you’re right, there’s a lot of change in the world and people do need a way that they can communicate in a way that doesn’t require asking people for permission to do that. So no terms of service to stand up a WordPress site. Obviously there are a few particular hosting, but it’s permissionless technology, so domain names, so you can do the innovation at the edges without hitting corporate terms of service or privacy policies or de platforming or whatever. Something that I’ve been thinking a lot about though is that for the majority of people, the majority of time that don’t hit those safeguards and what WordPress offers is WordPress and WooCommerce offer creators the ability to put their stuff online to create and curate experiences for people to go to, but they don’t actually do that much in terms of putting that content in front of an audience.
And obviously with the audience comes monetization. So once you’ve got somebody on your WordPress site or your Woo store, you can monetize them, but you kind of have to build all that stuff together. Now you know that I spend a lot of time with crypto stuff and I know that you also have at least historically spent a bunch of time with crypto stuff. One of the things I’m spending a lot of time thinking about at the moment is if and how WordPress can back into those crypto networks in order to reconnect this permissionless publishing and creation with audiences. I dunno if you saw GoDaddy have just done this partnership with ENS domains. So you can have a
Noel:
Oh nice
Dave:
Noel, which is your ENS name, but you can also connect that to null talk.com. So somebody can just send you crypto to nulltalk.com and it’ll go into your wallet address.
Noel:
My number EAFs addresses are finally worth something.
Dave:
Maybe
Noel:
$10 maybe. Cool.
Dave:
I dunno whether you’ve thought much about how the worlds of WordPress and crypto collide. Do you share the belief that I have, which is that we can kind of make WordPress competitive with these canned corporate networks where you have got audience, you have got addressability, and you can build the monetization around your content in a way that is still permissionless and open and allows for this innovation at the edges? Or are you just totally focused on keeping your feet warm and rescuing dogs at this point?
Noel:
No, it’s a good question. So I love the theoretical aspirations and direction of crypto, and a lot of the time it doesn’t necessarily play out that way. It’s almost, it’s like bigger marketing schemes and everything than let’s take publishing platforms. We had Medium that kind of came and went, Cora came and went, and obviously these platforms are still around, but in terms of their hype, now we have Substack, which was supposed to be all and all that kind of good stuff, and ultimately just fading now because of sort of Nazi undertones or whatever it is. And then there’s the 10% platform fee and God knows what else. And so maybe that’s on its way out to sooner than later and maybe it’ll be something else that comes or whatever. But can Crypto as a technology change that I think it can augment it, but is the underlying technology going to provide a new business model?
Unlikely not in my opinion. I think when you look at traditional media, it was best when investigative journalism was paid for, it was open, it was free. You’d go on the website and it’s like, Hey, wow, that’s an insane case. And now you have all these paywalls and everything, so maybe media needs a different business model, but is the transaction method itself and the benefit of permissionless and all that actually going to be the big game changer? I don’t know. I am certainly in crypto, but from a seed investment perspective and happy to ride the waves and trade the volatility, but I’m not beyond Bitcoin, I’m not going to bet anything large. I guess long term longterm,
Dave:
I see at the moment the most important thing that crypto is doing is connecting people, creating that graph. And I have this meme that’s living in my mind about being the last audience that you ever need to build because you’re talking about the fact that you’ve got a medium experience or a Substack experience or whatever experience. And with each of these, you build up the content, you build up your audience, and then inevitably it downturns because the world changes or the team changes or the investors sell or whatever it is. Apps and experiences are ephemeral by their nature. Some persist longer than others, but the social graph underneath I don’t think should or there’s an opportunity for it not to be ephemeral. And when you look at, I’m not sure if you’ve played with forecaster at all, but it’s that sort of idea where because I have my wallet has a connection with yours, anyone can build on top of that.
So you can build messaging, you can be email, you can build push notifications, you can build a whole full-fledged social network and we can sort of see with the connection of domain names through to crypto wallets as well, you could see how that kind of extends out. So once you’ve got those connections, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re building a TikTok type experience or a SUBSTACK type experience or a Shopify type experience on top of it because you’ve already got that social graph in place. And in fact, there’s a lady called Legion who I think she’s part of Variant, which is a VC based out of New York, and she wrote something recently about the emergence of these sort of short lifespan social apps where something comes along with a friend tech or maybe it’s just a kind of overnight success with some TikTok variant or whatever.

We’ve seen a bunch of these social networks come and go, and even the longstanding ones have had to evolve over time. So Facebook’s just sort of rubs every good idea that everyone else comes along with. But what if that ephemerality of the experiences isn’t a bug, but it’s a feature. So that’s the thing that I’m kind of interested in is if we can connect at a level that kind of underpins everyone that’s using WordPress and WooCommerce and you’ve got that audience, then you can distribute, can create audience, and you can kind of be assured that you own that audience as long as you own the wallet that they’re all connected to, that seems like a really resilient way for people to create a living, whatever is changing in the world around them.
Noel:
If I understand you correctly, the amount of metadata associated with the wallet at that point is quite large. You have followers following some sort of foundational social mechanics in that way, I assume.
Dave:
Yeah, and there’s a big spectrum of these things. So you can look at something like Lens. So Lens is a social protocol where everything’s much on chain. So if I follow you and I have collected your follower, NFT, and every piece of content I create is like a content NFT. So the accounts, the content, the relationships between them are all NFTs and then you’re obviously kind of extract the graph from all of that. And then you’ve got something like Farcaster, which is actually hybridized. So you have an element of on chain, but you have a lot of off chain as well.
And their aim is to be sufficiently decentralized, to be resilient and allow the wallet to wallet connection stuff, but it’s not all on chain. So you’re not building this sort of very expensive inefficient database to power what needs to be like a high performance social network, but however you kind of then execute on top of it. I think the principle is that as these experiences emerge and die off over time, and as more and more time elapses, people are going to increasingly see a need to have an identity that they can own, which is prior to any of those. So it’s not Facebook’s account that I can log into. It’s my identity that I can attach to a Facebook account and if I decide to stop using Facebook, I can walk on.
Noel:
So how is this all different from Mastodon?
Dave:
It’s a good question. So Mastodon relies on, so you can run your own Mastodon server, but you have an identity that is federated through whichever MA on server you want to be a part of. But if that server goes away, then your identity goes away as well. This is what I’m talking about here is as long as the cryptographic network is up, so as long as Ethereum NS or Bitcoin Ns or whichever network it is, then your identity persists.
Noel:
So would it make more sense for Mastodon to have E or Solana or whatever under it?
Dave:
I think I definitely see a world where those two intersect so that you connect your crypto identity into Mastodon, right? You’re a creator. So you start off on YouTube, you build up an audience, you start monetizing, and then you decide that actually YouTube’s not the right place because you want to start exploring some content which is not aligned with their terms of service. So you need to go somewhere else. How do you take that audience with you? Currently this concept is about being able to take your audience from platform to platform without needed to rebuild it from scratch over again and over a long enough time, very much just saying that becomes necessary. Are we all just going to live with?
Noel:
I like that a lot because this means that someone who’s innovative can build SaaS application that’s interesting, gamified whatever, has great mechanics and then doesn’t own the customer data, but is able to monetize transactions or some kind of value exchange on the platform itself for as long as they live without creating that kind of lock-in. Obviously I feel like it really depends on how far the metadata goes and how much of that do you store at the core of your profile, and then how much of that is stored on layer twos or whatever somewhere else.
Dave:
And I think that sort of stuff sorts itself out, but the core tenant there, you own that identity and I get if you zoom out and go, do you want your identity to be owned by a corporation? Do you want your work relationships and your friends, your ability to contact your friends to be totally reliant on a corporation that just seems really dystopian to me. So anyway, we kind of came here because we were talking about the importance of WordPress and WooCommerce, but also their limitations. So anyway, that’s my take on how one way that we could fix that limitation. So you’re free to create, but you are also then connected with an audience and you can build, if you launch a new WooCommerce store or you start being active on another social app, whether it’s centralized or not, you can still reach that same audience. So anyway, that’s just to close the loop on that one.
Noel:
I guess my final thought there is, as much as I like it, I feel that even with substack, you can export your email list, but you’re going to have to do a bit of work to recreate that and get the same mechanic going. Now Substack does weird things like, Hey, you’re signing up for this. Do you also want to be part of these? And it’s selected by default or whatever. So you probably get an inflated number of subscribers, which are not really true subscribers, so you’re not losing that per se. But yeah, I think people worry then if take LinkedIn for example, or in any of these platforms, there’s always an edge. If you’re able to post something where your audience likes it, literally just likes it and that’s all they do, their audience will see that or there’s a good chance some cohort or sample of their audience will see that. Similar to how Edge ranked, I think it was EdgeRank on Facebook work back in the day, and you want those benefits, so you don’t necessarily want to leave the platform regardless of how permissionless everything is and how fancy everything is under the hood.
Again, I think for me it comes a lot back to metadata. It’s not only about exporting your just the names and emails and a couple of other opt-in metrics, when did they sign your opt-in whatever else kind of critical information. But how rich of metadata can be stored in, I guess the equivalent. There is some layer two setups where you might have a very highly social metadata layer that captures a thousand different data points and that’s the open standard of that sort of data, which I like a lot similar to how a restaurant can store it in an open standard around their food menu and then their nutritional value and where is their food source from and other weird stuff. So I think that opportunity exists and I like that a lot.
Dave:
Nice. Well let’s move on because I know that when you’re not on sabbatical and working Human Made, you guys are very focused on a couple of things. You’re focused on the enterprise market for WordPress and you have been for a long time and you’re very focused on the applicability of this latest generation of AI technologies to WordPress as well. So to the extent that your head is still in those spaces, what have you been working on? What is there that we can dig into more there
Noel:
Personally, and I feel that this has trickled into the marketing because I direct I guess a lot of the high level direction around marketing and what do we put out there if you learn anything from crypto and NFTs is that attention is the scarcest commodity currency or whatever that is out there and everybody’s just fighting like crazy about it. And something like WordPress the struggle, the insane struggle is that you’re having to re-explain yourself every time because people think the software is outdated, insecure, obsolete, whatever keyword they can fill the hole of because WordPress doesn’t do it for itself, not at the various niche levels. So it doesn’t necessarily do that at a hardcore consumer level. It doesn’t compete in terms of product marketing with Webflow at the enterprise level, we don’t have any organized product marketing to compete with AM and Sitecore and these other companies.
It’s slowly coming together. We have the SCALE consortium, which is that association of enterprise agencies at the moment. And then there’s other companies such as Pantheon, Josh at Pantheon especially, is really trying to push the right narratives forward. My biggest challenge I think in many ways is how do you keep WordPress relevant in this day and age when there’s massive budgets spewing left, right, and center? Good example is we have a great rest, API, we have custom post types, we have anything, and we had that for years already.

And then something like Contentful comes around, it’s expensive, it’s nowhere near as good, and then captures a massive chunk of the market in terms of revenue and we’re left behind having zero product marketing. You can’t go on any sort of centralized WordPress page and see cool stuff like next JS integration, integration of Algolia and this and that. We don’t have this Mac Alliance type. It’s almost like a cartel of cool, best of breed, headless, semi open source or open source companies that have come together to put a really great narrative in place that helps a buyer that’s in the mood for best of breed to slip into that stack, which is great because there’s some really great technologies in there, but WordPress hasn’t done any of that. So we’re left having other companies, industry analysts, whoever fill that narrative for us
Dave:
And often not in a way that is fully representative and correct.
Noel:
Yeah, it’s unfortunate. We often repeat ourselves and have to do almost like a double sale because the champion of WordPress inside a large organization may come around and be really hyped about WordPress, which is great. We’re really happy, but they’ll be like, Hey, help me sell this to the board. Help me sell this to the stakeholders. Oh, I’m getting pushback. It’s insecure, this, that, and just selling the same thing twice and doing that every single time.
Dave:
And you’re selling yourself as an agency as well.
Noel:
Exactly. So that’s the double sell.
Dave:
Yeah, I guess it’s the challenge of being a bazaar rather than a cathedral in some ways, cathedral or big suppliers, one place opening as Cafe religion Bizarre is like, well, yeah, exactly. How do you see that being fixed? What’s your master plan for how to address that? How would you describe it? It is just a very diffuse and bottom up messaging space. So lots of contradictory, even within WordPress. It’s like use Elementor or use Gutenberg, use divvy, whatever it is. There are lots of competing sub narratives within the WordPress space that are challenging. Have you got a vision for how we solve this?
Noel:
I think the easiest is probably if it comes from the top and the foundation or Matt put their foot down and say, Hey, we need to hire a chief growth officer or a CMO for consumer for enterprise. That’s my gut feeling. It’s in terms of how you get there in quickest, because these people obviously bring wealth of experience and then are hyper-focused on matching the solution WordPress with the problems of a given space, enterprise or consumer or e-commerce. Commerce is a great example. You have Shopify, you have BigCommerce, you have other headless e-commerce tools coming out that are even open source and doing very well, and their marketing is amazing. And Woo’s marketing is actually quite good compared to I think WordPress. And that’s not to say that the WordPress marketing was always bad or anything like that. That’s not the case at all. Anything, it’s remained the same, but the market has changed.
So 10 years ago, the website was the solution. So WordPress in itself was the solution. And nowadays we have a very diversified MarTech stack. We have a lot of different pieces running around. There’s you need an integrative landscape, you need to be able to tell a coherent story around these things and that product marketing needs a lot of work. MarTech has come a very long way in terms of doing great product marketing. I think even if you look at Stripe coming out or Intercom coming out, some of these companies just redefined the game in some ways. And we haven’t done that for WordPress in this new world. We haven’t done this for WordPress where it’s not one size fits all anymore. It was one size fits all before, but now it’s so much different. WordPress is not the solution. It’s the underlying very stable platform that we want to keep around for decades to come potentially. And what we do on top of that is the exciting thing, but it starts from a position of open source and has to be enticing enough that these various niches or segments or verticals are attracted to starting from that position as opposed to getting hooked into a Contentful, an AM, Sitecore, Webflow, whatever else.
Dave:
I remember what you took at WordCamp Europe, I can’t remember which one it was now, but this was your message back then.
Noel:
Still is 2018 and it was in 2015 at WordCamp Tokyo too. We haven’t, I’m not calling anything. I’m just saying we were a solution before. We’re a tool now. And it’s much harder to tell these stories and you have to be surgical about how you approach the market. I think.
Dave:
Yeah, it’s a challenge to have such a broad product. I think the counterpoint to that is that by staying broad, you keep possibilities open and opportunities open and that gives you product longevity. But what you sacrifice is the focus and therefore the ability to evolve the product to be the best possible fit for a merchant or a user at any particular point because your messaging has to be pulled. It’s like a Swiss army knife compared to a pairing knife. And if you’ve got no knife at all, then you might be happy with a Swiss Army knife. As you become more specialized as a chef, you’re like, this is no good anymore. I need a particular type of knives. And I think that’s definitely happened with our digital toolkits.
I also feel like the nature of the web has evolved away from websites towards content and away from search to the suggestion algorithms. And that’s something that is difficult for WordPress, which is ultimately a website building tool as it’s most commonly used to compete with. Because a lot of businesses now don’t even care about a website until they’ve got to a certain volume they’re selling through social or messaging groups or whatever it is. So one of the things I spend my time thinking about is how do you, because WordPress is like a content management system, that’s how we describe it, but there’s actually a whole bunch of smaller requirements all lumped together. So it’s content creation, it’s content curation, it’s content display, it’s like content storage, all of these different things. What if you just used WordPress to create content which then went out into the world and it was experienced in a social type setting or a
Noel:
Tumblr?
Dave:
Like Tumblr? Yeah.
Noel:
But I thought that was great because Matt took WordPress and went off and did something on the external side of WordPress, and I thought that was really great that he went out and did that. And now he’s coming back with that experience of it was hard for me to, or whatever to or very challenging experience to try and build a social network and then use WordPress. But I’ve learned a lot. You probably, you’re exposed to end users a lot more to having to reconfigure something for a particular outcome. And I think that’s a really great experience. And maybe part of why we have this data liberation project, which is again an external project. It’s not an internal one. We’re not arguing about are we going to build a Gutenberg cover block first or a feature block or whatever. I personally couldn’t care less what we build next in WordPress because I think it’s a great piece of software as it is.
We’ve hit not 80 20, but 90 10. And I think the message, what we have to come together on as a community is how do we market WordPress in the coming years? Because WordPress, when it was competing against other software 10 years ago, and it was in one category, it was this one powerful thing against whatever the competitor was. And now you’re taking WordPress, which is not the largest competitor, well, I mean will be by installs, sure. But it’s not necessarily the largest in terms of conversation at whatever the niche or vertical is. So if it’s landing pages with signup and stuff, you have HubSpot, CMS probably takes more Unbounce, whatever. There’s a lot of conversation in these various niches and they have excellent product marketing, which when you compare WordPress in that setting without having done the product marketing exercises for WordPress at that niche or vertical level, the conversation and these feature lists look wildly different.

And that’s exactly what happened with Contentful and WordPress because Contentful was saying, well, WordPress is this. It’s that kind of sucks and it’s old and all these things, and we didn’t even have a single page to even enter that conversation. So in these micro conversations or these micro niches or verticals, whatever you want to call them, none of them are we actually loud? So we’re loud overall. And people may lie to themselves and say we power 43% of the web. But when it comes down to the real deal and what’s actually happening on the ground, I think you need a much realer take in terms of where does the market go? And it’s important that we use WordPress because it’s a technology that’s fundamental to humanity, especially during such trying times. I want us to be able to market really well, if anything.
Dave:
So for me, AI can help a lot with this because you can have a conversation about exactly what you need and an AI can go out and assemble all the different components, the theme, the plugins, the patterns, the whatever you need to create exactly the experience you’re looking for on top of WordPress. So we go from, I guess this challenge that WordPress is like a broad church. And so it’s hard to compete on an individual kind of niche by niche basis to potentially leapfrogging like let’s paint a rosy picture, being able to leap these SaaS platforms that have harder constraints that AI can’t just come in and orchestrate because the AI is always going to be living within that particular platform. Is there an opportunity here for an AI powered WordPress to outcompete out niche, these platforms that are not modular, that are not open source and have the harder constraints that they need in order to be focused? Can we lean on that?
Noel:
I think yes, but at the same time you have to look at the success a platform like Ghost had in terms of self-publishing and being that sort of platform and having and building this great niche. And John Nolan has been very successful coming out day one of Ghost. I don’t know how many people are like, oh yeah, he’s totally going to make it and still have this business years later. And here he is doing very well. And I think again, that comes back to the fundamentals of product marketing and understanding your audience. Now, AI is great, and because in absence of amazing product marketing, one of the things you can do is attach yourself to the most amazing, innovative technology that is out there. And then not necessarily a bait and switch, but you’re saying, Hey, here’s ai and then bring it back to WordPress. And so you can do all these things together and it gives people, it sort of busts their potential frame because all of a sudden they’re associating WordPress with this top tier innovative technology that’s coming out.
And the beauty of WordPress in scenarios like this is that it’s probably the one CMS in the space that can move faster than any other in terms of raw output with functionalities and capabilities from various authors that is unmatched on parallel. So I’m assuming you can find OpenAI integrations, clawed integrations, maybe just a stable diffusion integration. And then on top of that you have these other things and then maybe Elementor or whoever else or Sujay over at Astra, they’re maybe working on various agents for each particular block. So you might have an agent for a forum, you might have an agent for a hero block, then you might have an agent for pages and posts. You might have an agent for APIs, and then you have agents that orchestrate these and everything comes together and you might be moving quite quickly. And that’s exciting. But yeah, it is nice from a marketing perspective, but is it the long-term solution? Unlikely.
Dave:
Interesting. Okay. Is there anything else that you want to talk about while we’ve, we’ve got the pleasure of each other now because far away and in this crazy world, who knows when it’s going to be a chance to catch up again? I hope it’s not too long, but is there more that you’d like to talk about that NGO work or more about what’s on your mind from a human made or just general WordPress perspective?
Noel:
I’d say what I talked about now is probably the thing that bugs me the most or lives rent free in my mind is that amazing effort and energy that everyone puts into WordPress, but then is trying to fit through a pipe that’s way too small in terms of product marketing is never really displayed in its full glory to the rest of the market in a very specialized way. And it’s a struggle to you start thinking, are you delusional because you’re talking to an enterprise client, they’re like, ah, WordPress doesn’t do this, doesn’t do that. And you’re sitting there thinking, am I just like a WordPress maxi or do I actually know what I’m talking about? So I think in many ways, when Matt, years ago, 2015, what was it 2015 when he said Learn JavaScript deeply, I think now it’s learn marketing deeply. That’s what I think should be WordPress’s mission for the next two years because we are coming, we are in a time when we’ve gone boom bust and we have an opportunity to seize right now as companies are looking at down rounds, they’re laying off staff.
One of the first places they cut is R&D and innovation, and we have an opportunity to catch up on that ground. Not that we have to necessarily build a lot of stuff at all. I don’t even think we have to build that stuff, but I think we have to just do a much better job of product marketing at three, four or five levels of niches. And to me, it doesn’t mean that those couple niches define what WordPress is. There are just merely abstractions and narratives that sit on top of the WordPress we know today. It’s not trying to change what WordPress is.
Dave:
Concrete illustrations of what you can do. Yeah, and I guess if I was going to do a callback, like some sort of competent podcaster, it would be the beginning of the episode you were talking about how in the chaotic physical world you find yourself in, you have military civilian, NGO, everyone working together, and it was those words, right? Everyone working together towards a common goal. That was the straight, that was how things were getting done. So I wonder how we apply that same directionality or synergy in the WordPress ecosystem, everyone working together towards common mission. That seems to be the thing that would help here.
Noel:
I think we do it by and large when it comes to code, but people fear what they don’t understand. And sometimes I think this 43% of the web crap gets to our head and makes us think that we’re unbeatable and it’s a nice number, but we don’t power 43% of the web. Maybe that statement was true 10 years ago.
Dave:
It’s of domains, isn’t it?
Noel:
It’s not even domains. We can be the secondary or tertiary CMS on a given platform. It doesn’t Facebook have a WordPress blog. Do you, all of a sudden, and I’m sure facebook.com then shows up in this 43% metric. So is that technically right? The much more accurate value, if there would be one is what percentage of page views do we power? What’s the weighted page views that we power globally?
Dave:
Yeah, interesting.
Noel:
And even then for WooCommerce it would be how much revenue does WooCommerce generate compared to other platforms? There’s a lot questions here. Where I think we’re using the map is not the terrain and we’re abusing this map versus terrain difference at a way too large of a scale. And I don’t see enough red team, blue team internal debate to try and figure out what are we maybe doing? What are we missing when we go to market? Because there certainly must be something wrong if almost every agency in this industry or community has to sell WordPress every time they go sell.
Dave:
Well, this has been a more reflective and somewhat solemn episode than that. I thought it would be not.
Noel:
Well, it’s important times.
Dave:
Usually we spend much more time laughing. It is important and I appreciate it. We can have fun and we can also take things seriously sometimes too. Yeah. And is there any way that anyone that’s still listening can support the work that you’re doing in Ukraine, helping animals who can’t help themselves?
Noel:
Yeah, absolutely. So come to my Instagram profile, Noel Tock. I have a couple of explainer videos, like our annual review of the charity last year. I have how we do evacuations and what all happens at our charity. A whole sequence of events, even just those two videos alone will give you very deep insights, I’d say, in terms of what we do. And if that aligns with your values and what you’re willing to support, then by all means reach out or make a donation. This money literally goes into gas costs and shelter costs and food costs and everything. I pay for all my own stuff out here. I’ve never taken a dollar out of donations. So I’m fully self-funded. And Fred is too. We only pay for our Ukrainian staff because they obviously need it, but we try to run as lean as we can. So every donation goes a very long way in helping the little ferries.
Dave:
Okay, so that’s NoelTock as your Instagram username. Dude, stay safe out there and thank you for your time. Thanks for making time from today.
Noel:
I appreciate it too. Thanks for.

Noel, who is currently on sabbatical from Human Made to work on a crisis in Ukraine, shares his journey from meeting a business partner at a WordPress event to helping build a charity in Ukraine.

They discuss the importance of WordPress as a reliable and necessary technology, especially in a time of global conflict and political polarization. However, they also highlight the limitations of WordPress, particularly in terms of product marketing and competing with other platforms.

Noel suggests that WordPress needs to focus on marketing deeply and understanding its audience better. They also discuss the potential of AI in enhancing WordPress and the need for the WordPress community to work together towards a common goal.

Noel Tock on Instagram

NOR DOG

Connect with Noel


by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Dev Biz Fluctuations, OS Onchain Frames Bounties, and Deep Thoughts on Woo


February 9, 2024

But before I get into that, thought I would mention that our sponsor Ominsend has this great deal on their SMS and email marketing for WooCommerce. 30% off the first three months and migration valued at $1,000. Always like to drop in a bit of a deal if one of my sponsors is having one.

A drop in a Woo devs business

A bit of an interesting read from Rodolfo at Business Bloomer over on the WPMinute. Although at first glance I thought the title Lessons Learned After 37% Drop in WooCommerce Dev Business made me think it was a projection of the industry, but reading through it he gives the reasons this all came to be. It is a bit subjective as it is the experience of one developer, but also has some good food for thought. And his share on X didn’t result in any conversation of others seeing this issue, which doesn’t really mean a lot.

Although I will admit I don’t think even the concept of being concerned about Automattic selling Woo is anything we should be worrying about at all. But he shared some good lessons he has experienced and I am sure there are others that can relate. Though I have heard quite the opposite from most who we have had on the show.

Open source 🤝 Onchain – Frames bounties for WordPress and WooCommerce

Now I am going to drop this one in as our host Dave Lockie shared it on X. I’m not really clear on the context of it, but I am going to share this with you from Dave’s google doc. He explains part of his role at Woo and Automattic is to explore how our two worlds can combine for the benefit of creators who use the tools we make. Today I’m excited to announce some grants available for Frames builders that can help us explore this intersection.

He then shares examples of how WordPress and Woo users can use frames for fun and profit such as minting WordPress posts as NFTs, selling/pre-ordering a Woo product, adding comments to a WP post and Using gating to unlock exclusive content. Then the doc gets into more stuff around what he is doing. So if you see where this is going, it might be worth checking out.

What’s up with the interactivity API

Quick note. Monday I am having a couple of devs from Automattic on a show discussing the interactivity API and what that means to Woo and WordPress. If you have a question you would like for me to ask them, please find a link in the show notes at dothewoo.io or find me some other way.

Challenges in outsourcing, deep thoughts on Woo

One of the new additions to WooBits is something I am going to call, Deep Thoughts on Woo. Now this may be a misleading title, but I’m sticking with it. What is it you may ask? Well, every week I have a ton of things swirling in my brain due to stuff on see on posts, social or maybe even hear in a podcast. A topic that, well appears way too many times for me. And what I want to do with that topic is throw it out there at you, the listeners, and have you leave me an audio of a short tip or insight on the topic.

This week it is outsourcing. I mean, I always see discussions, questions and other content around it, but it occurred to me that instead of challenges around general outsourcing, are there specific tips when outsourcing a developer or designer for a WooCommerce build. What do you think? If I get enough of these in a weeks time, I will do an episode about it, replaying the audios submitted. If I get just one or two, I’ll save them for the next WooBits. If I get none, I’ll still wonder about it.

 

Thanks to our Pod Friends for their support

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Funding WordPress Projects with Tom Willmot and Joost de Valk


February 8, 2024

Joost and Tom highlight the need for a systematic approach to funding these projects, rather than relying on individual companies to step in during a crisis. They suggest the creation of an “app store” for WordPress plugins, where a percentage of sales could be used to fund necessary projects.

They also discuss the idea of a WordPress support foundation, which could distribute funds to various projects. The conversation emphasizes the need for a more structured approach to supporting open source projects, to prevent them from reaching a crisis point.

Joost de Valk on Twitter aka X

Tom Willmost on Twitter aka X


Transcript
BobWP:
Hey there. I am here today with Joost from Emilia Capital and Tom from Human Made. Why we are here. It all started with a post that Joost wrote. I’m here with both of them to just touch on what inspired this, but we’re going to really be looking at a bigger picture, and it was a post that was done on post status. But first, for those of you that don’t know these two illustrious celebrities in the open source WordPress space, maybe we can have a quick intro for those few people that have just returned from 20 years in the cave, in the deepest, darkest jungles. So how about we start with, we’ll start with you, Tom.
Tom:
Sure. Well, so I’m Tom Willmot. I co-founded a company called Human Made in the WordPress space back in 2010. Prior to doing that, I was a freelance WordPress developer for several years. Human Made is now 70 something people with distributed globally across the globe, and primarily focused on WordPress in WordPress in big complex enterprise settings. So a bunch of big brand name clients that listeners will probably know the likes of Sony and Disney and Siemens and Harvard University folks like that who are wanting to use WordPress. They love WordPress. They love how flexible and easy to use it is, but they’ve got somewhat complex environments, perhaps technically, perhaps from a workflow, perhaps from a legal, perhaps from a compliance point of view.
And so they need some help to integrate WordPress into that environment and enable them to use all of the things that they love about WordPress.

I’m based in France with my wife and two kids. I’ve been here for about five years and having kids kind of coincided somewhat with Covid, so I didn’t travel as much this last few years as I used to. And so I’ve been enjoying getting back into that now that we’re seeing Word camps popping up across the world, very much enjoying getting back into traveling and hanging out in the WordPress community, which is one of the things that was very attractive to me right back at the beginning when this all started. There must’ve been something in the water. I think Yos probably found it. I think you found it.
Joost:
I started the company Yoast in 2010. So yeah, it’s exactly the same time. I think it was, well, it’s not in the water, it was in the ecosystem. We were all starting companies at the time as starting to figure out how to make money with WordPress. Slightly different journey. I founded that Yost became the CEO of Yoast because I founded it after a while. That role went to my wife who was far better at it, so well, we continued it in 2021. We sold Toast. At that time we had 150 employees and wow, it was quite a big company. So we were done with it.
We sold it to a new digital. Then we started building our own investment fund called Emilia Capital. We now invest in on lots of different things actually, but only in companies that we think make the world better in some way, be it big or small. But basically we’re trying to do some good with the money that we made. And a lot of that is going back into the WordPress world because we love the WordPress world. So you might know some of our portfolio companies as we then call them now, we’re trying to be grown up investors as Terri Cast Ossify, equalize Digital, recently launched personalized wp. So there’s quite a few of them now. And we’re partners at post status where I did this post that we’re going to talk about.
BobWP:
Very cool. Well, let’s get into that. So the project is called PHP Code Sniffer. Now let’s get in with a little context around what that is a situation and what brought you to write this post.
Joost:
So PHP Code Sniffer is a tool that I think every serious WordPress developer uses to check their code for commonly occurring errors that everybody makes anyway, all the time. On top of that, we have a library in the WordPress world called WPCS, which might be a bit more known to people in some cases, which is the WordPress code style, which enforces the way that WordPress core code needs to look. But that WordPress code style has been adopted by, well, I think almost all of the bigger companies in the space as the thing that they use to check their code for code style, but also for well, for things that you can improve in lots of different ways. So sometimes it’ll recommend you to use another function when you’re using a particular function because WordPress core has a better function for the thing you’re doing. Or sometimes it will tell you, Hey, this form have here that’s all nice and fun, but you don’t have any security checking on it.
Or, Hey, this string you have here is not translatable. It does a lot of checking like that. And I think that no serious WordPress developer should live without it and should just run it. And most bigger companies run it on pretty much every commit. So it’s a tool that developers use and use a lot. I’m not kidding. I probably broaden P-H-P-C-S automate it in some way about 20 times a day, if not more. And I’m not alone. Many, many companies do that. I know that a Yoast, they do that. I think Human Made uses P-H-P-C-S, so all of their developers will run it every day as well. So it’s a tool that we very often use, and it’s not just a WordPress world. P-H-P-C-S is also used by Drupal, by Joomla, by media wiki, by doctrine, by a lot of these big PHP projects. And what happened was that the developer was billing.

P-H-P-C-S was doing that on a company account and decided to quit. And that company decided also to not hand over P-H-P-C-S to someone else. So it became a bit of a problematic thing. Now, luckily, that’s all been solved, Juliet, for those of you who don’t know her, you should look her up. She’s one of the heroes of the unsung heroes of the WordPress space in that she keeps the PHP of WordPress nice and clean and helps running us on newer PHP versions every time. And again, she stood up and she has now taken over that project and she said, it’s all fine, but I’ve been running WPCS and I’m now also going to be running this for so long and nobody’s paying for it. This needs to change. And I think that that is a very fair question. Hey, y’all pay up for what I’m doing for you here for free.

But it also opens up a wider discussion about how do we support the tools that we use that are not like the tools that end users may be using, but the tools that we use to build those. It’s this whole ecosystem. And are we even aware of the fact that we’re using this code and Well, I think it’s a problematic thing, and I have my opinions on how we should solve this in an ideal world. Unfortunately, I’m not the one who gets to decide that, but you get to share that on the show.

So in my ideal world, we would have a WordPress app store where WordPress plugins, the plugin repository would not just be for free plugins, but would also be for commercial plugins. And we take a percentage of sales there and put that money to work on stuff like this and lots of other things. I think that would make WordPress better for everyone. We could how we want plugins to sell their things, and we couldn’t enforce all the proper legalities there that are needed, and we could fund the companies and the projects that we need that we all need to, well, to sustain our work.

Human Made was the first sponsor of P-H-P-C-S. When they opened it up, they actually sponsored quite generously. I think it’s quite a lot of money. Tom can talk to that, but it’s also in reality, if PPCS wasn’t there and WPCS wasn’t there, it probably would be worth it to Tom on a yearly basis to build something.
BobWP:
Tom, I’m curious with what Joost just said, the idea of the App Store, what I like about that is that, like you said, how do we get this in front of everybody? How do people know about, how does an agency like Human Made know that there is this need until something happens like this and then Joost writes an article and then everybody makes this move and gets this fundraiser going? Do you agree that instead of individually worrying about our projects being supported, that an effort where something is being done and money is being funneled to these projects, is that a value to you? And how did you as an agency decide once you saw this, was it kind of like a no-brainer, hey, we’re going to support this, but again, how do you find them? And there could be so many of them, you could get buried in hundreds of these projects.
Tom:
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the fear or the complexity, the unknown here that I think stops a lot of companies from jumping in and supporting even things that probably are no-brainers for ’em, to some degree, human made is very aligned with contributing to open source. We’ve really grown the business alongside the WordPress project. We’ve contributed a lot to the WordPress project. There is no idea. There’s nothing in terms of our approach or values that is misaligned at all. And yet even for us, essentially takes me making that decision and to make it happen. And so I think demonstrates the reality that there is no systematic way for this kind of stuff to happen. It’s true. I think that there are some large number of companies in the world who don’t care about this and aren’t really looking for a solution. But even amongst those of us that do and do recognize that we get a lot of value from PP codes different and OPCS, we use it in all our client work. It’s part of the tool set that we use to build part of the tools that we provide to customers who host on Altas to help them enterprise quality code. And if we did have to build all that ourselves, it would certainly cost us a lot more than the amount we’re putting in.
And so that really was a no-brainer, but it took this project getting to crisis and essentially somewhat, someone DMing me and a few of us were able to hustle and make something happen. And I wanted to use Human Made’s position in that moment. I think we put in a thousand dollars a month for a year as a kind of commitment to start. And then we were kind of vocal about that in the hope that that would encourage others to do the same, which I think it did. I think that there were others then who stepped in as well. So that was great to see.

But that’s just like one project, that’s just one situation. What about all the others is not sustainable for that to work this way every time, or that’s only really appropriate for a crisis situation. And ideally, these things don’t need to get to crisis before something’s done about ’em. So I guess I think in some ways the WordPress project itself, we have some solution to this. We have the five for the Future initiative, which is structurally tied into the project. There are quite a lot of companies that gives companies a way to sign up and some structure around how they can contribute. I think all of that could be much better. There’s many ways in which that could be better, but at least it’s something. And the reality is actually all of us in the WordPress space are using and relying on many more open source projects than just WordPress.

And yet most of us are, even if we’re committed to giving 5% back to WordPress, it’s probably closer to zero everywhere else. And that’s also not particularly sustainable. So I think think some questions around, well, how do we make it easier for even the businesses who recognize the value of supporting Open Source and want to do it, how do we make it so that they can say yes and do it? Because the reality is as a business, most businesses beyond a certain size just have fairly complicated internal processes around signing off spend and what’s that spent for and tracking that and managing it. And there’s probably this sweet spot around human made side where we’re still small enough that I as the CEO can just go and swipe the credit card, credit card card and it doesn’t need to get wrapped up in all of internal process. So I’m kind of hopeful, I guess, of some of these projects that we’ve seen. I think

I forget the name of it now, the community kind of contribution piece that I think is it Courtney Robertson is behind? I think there’s a few things like that that I’ve seen, which I guess are somewhat attempting to be that middleman layer of we’ll help pull together the people who need money and put governance and structure around that such that companies can click a button to support and don’t need to build that governance and structure themselves. And so as much as an store would give us that, which I think it that is the necessary piece, that there needs to be some middleman layer between companies who’ve got money and are happy to give it and the projects that need it. But we’ve got a coordination and a governance and a structure piece that’s missing in the middle.
Joost:
It’s also a bit, because you guys, Tom are happy to give it, which I’m very happy to see, but there’s two other companies that have stepped up. One is Automatic who have similar, they can easily do that. But I think the WordPress world looks at automatic a bit too simply to fund everything and everything all the time. And GoDaddy, which is a bit more surprising because I think the bigger problem with these things is that there is no tangible outcome. So it is maintaining the project, which is a lot of work, but it doesn’t provide them with something that they wouldn’t have if they didn’t put that money in, which is exactly the problem when you get to stock market size because how do you tell your investors that you’ve put 50 KA year into something that didn’t bring direct value to your business or that would’ve not had the same value to your business if you put in zero? And that’s hard. In a way, we should probably look at this more, and that’s something that Git always is talking about as insurance,
We need this to be there, otherwise stuff breaks. I think especially the larger hosts need this to be there because if we all stopped checking our plugins with this stuff, they’d go absolutely nuts. And they are the ones making the most money. I think there’s this, in the WordPress world especially this, well, this almost situation where large plugin companies and Yoast, which was I think arguably one of the largest still on their own at that point, plugin companies, we made like 15 million in revenue a year. And that’s a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the hosts. I mean, the hosts are in the billions, and we really as an ecosystem or have not been good at having the hosts pay up for this sort of stuff, but we also need to make it easier for them. And my preference would be an app store because then it’s funded by the people using all the software all the time, and that’s easier.

But we could also do it by having a WordPress support foundation or whatever we want to call it, that they could put money into. And I would then distribute it to all the projects underneath it. Because no, PP CoSN is not at all. There are quite a few more of these, not all of them necessarily as important to us as WPCS and PP Code sniff, but there are quite a few. And I think that we need to figure this out now and we need to stop figuring this out on a one by one basis when there’s a crisis and really need to start managing it. And yeah, I think that that is the problem with the WordPress ecosystem right now is that I don’t know where to put that responsibility. We can ask Josepha to do yet again, that work too. But there’s so much that she’s already doing.

And this is a bit like, and that’s where that other work that we don’t talk about that much because it’s very unhealthy to talk about it in the WordPress ecosystem, but governance and then I’m not talking about the governance be above met, but more below met actually. How do we treat all of this and how do we get all of this handled? And I would love for there to be a bit more of a person that runs stuff like this and manages this and supports all these people doing fantastic work because the work that Juliet is doing in this project is superb. It makes the project better every time she does an update. And I think that that is something that we as a project need to reward better. And it shouldn’t be her work to then also go out and get funding. It’s actually a waste of her time. And yeah, I have ideas, but it’s also like, okay, who’s going to do this and how from where can we start this? And it’s actually hard. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I don’t have the real good solutions yet, but I do think that attacking at piecemeal is probably the wrong way.
Tom:
Do you think that could be scope for, I guess a broadening of the five for the future program such that it could also support to the broader ecosystem of open source projects that WordPress also relies on, I guess?
Joost:
Yeah, but under the five for the future program, nobody sends a check anywhere.
Tom:
No, sure. Yeah, that definitely is an aspect of it.
Joost:
And it’s also like the Five for the Future program sounds very good, but every corporate executive who you explain that program to will just laugh at you because there’s no way on earth that GoDaddy or Newfold or one of the other big hosts out there, and these are big companies, they have millions of sites running WordPress. They’re not going to get 5% of their revenue to that project, even though I think that they should. It’s not a story that they could sell to anyone.
Tom:
Yeah, I do see that challenge. I mean, I think the framing of insurance is true. I think in practice that is what it is. And some of us can think long-term enough, I suppose, to be able to make decisions around insurance. I think the strongest motivator is more repetitional, and I think this is probably where the project could wield more of a carrot and a stick in terms of rewarding those who do commit through five for the future or whatever else, and making it so that there is a cost for those who don’t. And I think there is some of that that’s part of Human MA’s motivation.
Our reputation and brand in some ways is built around the fact that we are close to the WordPress project, that we heavily support it. We can use that as a one of the advantages that we then sell to clients that differentiate us from those that aren’t. It does actually bring some real advantages. Part of me sharing it on Twitter and calling for others is more about triggering that reputation response or we want to be seen as a company in the WordPress space that cares. So I think that, and especially through five for the future, I think that there, there’s more that program could do to reward participating companies and introduce costs for those who aren’t, which I think could motivate even some of those larger companies who ultimately are getting a lot of value and the cost of exclusion would be fairly high.
Joost:
Yeah, no, I agree to a degree. I think the only thing where we’re asking a lot of money from these people is in sponsoring our flagship events. That’s when you really see that companies are paying upwards of a hundred grand to sponsor a single event. And people go, but nobody’s going to pay that. And then all the slots are sold and it’s clear that that value is there for them. Otherwise they wouldn’t do that. It’s that simple. I mean, really with the economy in the current state, it really is. If they didn’t think that that would make the money and they wouldn’t spend that money there, but that’s also the problem. Everyone’s cutting costs. So we need to make sure that this is not a cost that they would cut if they look at their spendings because they realize the value of what they’re doing there.
And that’s very hard when this is basically a free rider society. You cannot pay and have all the benefits of the tool even when you’re making billions of dollars. And that goes for WordPress core for so many other things. If I look at the WordPress core project now as well, there’s such a large percentage of contributors there that is paid for by Automattic, it’s insane. And we can’t really blame Automattic for that. We can only blame the large hosts who very often also have their own page builders, that they have teams of people running and then they have no one working on WordPress or a few people.

And I think that there’s a lot of these things where we need to change it. And I agree with you, a carrot stick approach is probably better here than trying to sell it in other ways. But there is something we need to do here. It is a problem. I think it’s not just a problem with P-H-P-C-S, I think it’s a problem with more of what we do and we need to figure out together as a community, how do we sustain these things. If you start looking at the JavaScript libraries that all of us are using to do things, you’ll find similar painful areas. You’ll get a headache anyway because there’s a lot more. And it’s incredibly hard to actually look at that.

And that goes for Composer and for other things that so many of us use that none of us pay for. I think that we need to figure this out rather quickly before we run the risk of some of these things breaking underneath our noses. And the problem is we’ll always solve it when it breaks right there, but then we have broken yet another developer who we didn’t want to break.
Tom:
So there’s the kind of, I guess, how you sell the benefit of participating, contributing, supporting these kinds of projects. I think another important aspect of this is just how that governance works in terms of deciding which projects are worth supporting, how much each project should get. I think in some ways that is the, we to some degree leave that to the market at the moment, which is that the projects that everyone uses and which don’t have enough people to contribute eventually do get to crisis, and then some people do step in, and that somewhat works by definition. That is what’s happening.
And that is a kind of market driven approach, I suppose, to solving that problem of which projects deserve what support. And I think that that’s the main thing that puts even a company like Human Made off from who want to support the projects that we’re using. But if I was to try and spin up a process internally by where we were identifying the projects that we used, making decisions around how much we should give to each of them, that just becomes a pretty large and complicated process.
Joost:
I fully agree part, I’m asking for this because I want someone to pick this up and go do it so that I don’t have to.
BobWP:
That’s exactly it. Yeah. I was going to ask you, and I think I kind of said a little bit earlier how you make those decisions, and there was a point where we had thought of through our sponsorships, taking a certain part, creating this fund and all this. And anyway, I pushed it aside because there were a lot of people already trying to do this, whether it’s supporting projects like this, sending people to board camps. I thought, why reinvent the wheel? But even as many smaller businesses, and I know it’s just a minuscule amount, but there’s enough of them, and I don’t know how many are like me, I want to do this, but I go to this project and I think, okay, well what can I give here? But I wanted to support this person over in GitHub because I know they’re doing really cool work and they’re doing all this for free.
And then there’s this person here that wants to go to WordCamp that has never been and wants to speak. And so like you said, yeah, I’m looking at all this, this would be great, but how can I decide? I would like to be able to give one flap amount of money and say somebody else has done all that work for me and they disseminated out there. But yeah, I don’t spend a lot of time in GitHub, but when I do, I end up start looking at all the, can you donate? Can you donate? And I just get depressed because I think I can’t just keep going from one to the other.
Joost:
It is hard. And we ran the Yoast Care Fund, which where we try to at least reward contributors to some degree everywhere across the world. And that takes a lot of time because you actually have to get in submissions and you have to look at those people and then decide who you’re going to do that. And they still run that, which I’m very proud of because I think it’s a very nice thing to have out there. And there’s a couple more funds that we did at Yoast, but we had the number of people to support that. It’s just a lot of work. The thing is, we did that because we cared and because we felt we were in some way a bit noble oblige in that, well, we were there. We were the ones making money in the workforce world. We needed to arrange this and give back.
I don’t think enough companies do that in many different ways. I mean, for the longest time, Yoast was the second biggest contributor to WordPress, and it was by no means the second biggest company in the space, not even close. And only when we got acquired, I realized just how small we actually were. I thought we’d be acquired by a company and we’d be like 10% of our revenue, maybe 20. And then we were acquired by no fold. And I was like, oh, wait, we’re actually a lot less than that. And that makes you feel very tiny, but it’s also, it makes you realize that this world is very different than I thought it was.

And I think that the people in the WordPress world don’t always realize just how big that market is and how much money is going around in that market. And that probably also means that if you start looking at that and who’s making the money into such, you also should be looking a bit more at the people making that money to actually fund these things a bit more because well, that’s a logical thing to do.

And then we need to start thinking about, okay, but if we decide that we want that, if we want more hosts, for instance, to step in and start paying for some of these things, then how do we structure it in such a way that they can actually step in and that this is a story that they can tell their boss? Because it’s not like these people, these companies don’t have people that work there that are very willing to do that. They are, I mean, Courtney is a great example and she got a GoDaddy to sponsor this, but you need someone who actually understands what’s happening. And that’s a big ask.

I think that that is something that where we as a community have to figure out how we do that in a way. It’s also that we as a community have to talk more about what makes Open Source great and what open source actually is. It’s funny, we talk a lot at Work camps about how WordPress changed our lives, but we never, or as much as I think about it, don’t talk enough about, Hey, but what does open source actually mean and how often do you contribute back to something that is not yours?

And I mean, a lot of people contribute to WordPress core and that’s great, but if I can count the number of good pull requests on yo CEO over the 10 years that I ran that company, I can count the number of people doing those. Juliett was one of them, but probably two hands. And some of those people were very active and were great. But it is like open source is more than just throwing it on GitHub.
Tom:
I have this conversation with a lot of founders and a lot of CEOs of even just all the other WordPress companies or other agencies been in this long enough now that I know most of them, and unlike none of them are like, don’t want to do this. They all to some degree want to do it, but it’s like, okay, I want to do it. But then, and mostly there isn’t anything. It’s structured in terms of then what? And so then they’re busy and the companies are busy, and so it doesn’t get followed through. Even this PHP codes, number one, I had that conversation with five other enterprise agency founders, all of whom were like, that’s great, but then it’s like, well, where do I contribute? Who is that? What about if they’ve got questions? There’s no answers to those questions and there’s just no system or process around that.
And so again, some of us are just take the leap and are like, I’ll just swipe the credit card and see what happens. But not many people are in that position. And so I think that there is actually quite a lot more people in the wings who could, if there was just enough structure to answer the questions that they have, why this project and not another one, what happens if, I mean, a common one I hear is like, oh, I’m happy to sign up to contribute monthly, but how long does that last for? Or what about if the project goes away? Or what about if the project gets enough money and doesn’t need it anymore? There’s quite a burden you’re taking on, you’ve got to keep up to date now with that project to some degree because maybe that money isn’t necessary in the future or something else needs it more, or just all of those things just start to turn the whole already half an hour into that conversation, you’re too exhausted to swipe the credit card. And
Joost:
The thing is that to some degree, you don’t want people to think about that. And that’s why we need something that takes care of this and looks at more and more than just P-H-P-C-S because it’s too hard to think about. And it’s also something that maybe you and I have the time to do, but if you run an agency with 10 people, then the chance of you having the time to do this is zero.
Tom:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Joost:
And you still might want to contribute a couple hundred bucks a month to supporting those tools, but you don’t want to spend the hat space to think about how is this working and where is it going? And I mean, PHP codes need a bit more money still, I think to actually be where it’s at. They have the Open Collective that they have now. It estimates that their annual budget is 95,000 Euro dollars, which sounds like a lot, but it needs to pay for Juliett. But ideally it also needs to pay for her training a few other people so that the bus factor of this thing doesn’t become a bit bigger than one.
And that’s the problem for a whole lot of these projects. There’s so many of these projects that we rely on actually have a bus factor of one where if one person gets under the bus, the entire project dies. And that’s where the insurance part of it is real. You need to take care of these projects because they go away if someone goes under a bus and you can fix that by paying some money. So in that case, it is insurance, but I do think that we need to make it easier to make these decisions, and we can’t rely on people having to do that for themselves.
Tom:
Well mean we just, there’s the classic problem in open source, which I think is nicely visualized by, I think maybe it’s an XKCD or something like that, where you’ve got the kind of one tiny domino piece right at the bottom that’s holding up some huge platform. And that’s true for the individuals who are maintaining these projects. But we also end up with the kind of corporate version of that where there is actually, like you say, Yoast is actually very small, and yet it was the second largest contributor to the open source project that also is the corporate version of the same problem almost or the same visualization. And so how we spread that out across many more people. I mean, I feel like things like the WordPress Community Collective, which I couldn’t remember the name of earlier, but I’ve remembered it since. I think they do go that they do solve some of this problem.
They solve the aggregation problem to some degree, and they do make it easy to say as a company, okay, we are just going to put X amount per month in and they will worry about where it goes and make that easy. And so it’s good to see some of those things popping up. Even like the scale consortium, which is this kind of enterprise WordPress kind of trade body that we’ve been experimenting with this past year.

I think there’s a role that these kind of industry bodies could play to help aggregate together the projects maybe that we are relying on as the enterprise WordPress space and help with some of the governance and the kind of collection and coordination. I think that the carrot and the stick piece, it’s hard to see. For me, it’s hard to see where that comes from other than something like a five for the future where the WordPress project has the power to reward and introduce costs to incentivize the behaviors that we want in our open source ecosystem. And so, yeah, I don’t see where that piece comes from other than from something like a fight for the Future program that’s run by the project.
Joost:
I agree.
BobWP:
Well, I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and like you said, it has to be done soon.
Joost:
Well, the thing is, if these projects break, we’ll fix it if we really need it, which is true in what Tom’s said, there’s a bit of a let the market decide approach. The problem is that we burn people who are doing really good work in the process and there’s not an endless supply does.
BobWP:
Exactly. Well, this has been great. I knew it would be great, and you didn’t even have to worry about having anything or nothing to talk. Think that’s true.
Tom:
Thats true. Alright, fair point. You’re right.
Joost:
It’s xkcd.com/ 23 4 7 because by heart. Yeah.
BobWP:
Nice. Yeah, right. That’s it.
Tom:
Well, if you’re listening to this and you run any kind of WordPress company, go to that look at it and feel guilty and then do something about take some action to do something about that.
Joost:
Yeah. If I can do one more shout out, that is, it’s still open opencollective.com/php_codesniffer there. Okay.
BobWP:
Go there.
Joost:
If you use it, pay some money.
BobWP:
Cool. And if anybody ever wants to talk to you, either one of you about this or you’ve put a little bit of flame under ’em through this discussion, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?
Tom:
Yeah, I’m more than happy to chat about this, especially to business owners chatting through why we have taken the approach we’ve taken. It’s common when I’m talking to other founders or CEO, they kind of have this framed backwards that they have maybe some point in the future once we are successful and we’re making enough money that then we’ll be able to contribute back.
And they think to some degree that human made is doing it from that position that we’ve been very fortunate and therefore we’ve got better margins than them and therefore we are giving some back. But I tend to think the opposite. There really is an opportunity, especially because not many people are doing it to use this as a competitive advantage, and it becomes actually the reason why Human Made has been as successful as it has in the space. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. And so I’m definitely happy to share what we’ve done and how I think about that. Twitter is probably the best way to get in touch with me at Tom Willmot on Twitter or the WordPress Slack. I’m also the same on there.
Joost:
For me. Also Twitter, J-D-E-V-A-L-K, on Twitter, Joost de Valk on the WordPress core Slack or in Post Status Slack. Just reach out, happy to chat to pretty much everyone who wants to chat about this

Thanks to our Pod Friends for their support

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: WooCommerce Performance Optimization with Sabrina Zeidan and Uros Tasic

February 7, 2024

Thanks to Our Sponors

They suggest that awareness of performance issues needs to be raised within the WordPress community, and that developers should regularly test their sites for performance issues.

To keep on top of performance they recommend Query Monitor, checking server logs, and using performance monitoring tools like Xdebug, Blackfire, and New Relic.

And they close out by suggesting regularly cleaning up unused plugins and ensuring that staging and development environments are not unnecessarily consuming resources.

Uros Tasic on LinkedIn

Sabrina Zeidan on LinkedIn


Transcript
Uros:
My name is Uros Tasic. I’m from Serbia. I’m a WooCommerce developer. I work for the Norwegian company called Maksimer, and the current role is Tech Lead and with me today is Sabrina, so she will introduce herself.
Sabrina:
Hi Uros. Hi everyone. Who is listening to us today? Thank you for joining us. My name is Sabrina Zeidan. I’m a WordPress performance engineer. I speed up WordPress websites for clients and for agencies for their clients. I also up plugins and themes. I used to work for WPRocket, XWP and other nice companies in our communities. I’m really fond of performance optimization and I love talking about it as well and happy to be on this podcast.
Uros:
Yep. I’m also doing the performance optimization, mostly the backend stuff and server optimization. But yeah, I’m last couple of months doing that for the company I work in. But yeah, I’m really passionate about that. So yeah, there is interesting stuff going on today with the performance team.
Sabrina:
And we’re here today to talk about speeding up Woo websites, websites that are built as stores. Where shall we start
Uros:
With Woo as a definition to be the scalable platform for your e-commerce? And on a question, I often got the question, can wool be a good choice for a big site? And I will always ask the other question, what is the definition of the big site? And the short answer is yes, but we can talk about in details, but the short answer is yes, just depends. So
Sabrina:
What would you define as a big side? Because it depends on many things, right? On the content, on users, on traffic, what in your work you would define as big site?
Uros:
So yeah, as a big site, I have multiple definitions, but let’s say that the big site is at least a couple of years old and we can touch that because when you start, you don’t have orders. You have a small amount of users, maybe some logging in behind. So again, it needs to have orders, users and so on. And as a data, I would say maybe above 10,000 products maybe starts to get big because then you’ll get a lot of orders and depending on the visitors and users, and then if you have users that are logged in to the site or you have some memberships or some discounts that is counting to be a bigger site. And as I said, I would qualify all the sites, all the businesses that are working multiple years, the site is getting bigger, the maintenance is not done maybe properly, so you’ll get stuff piling up two years and then that can slow up your site. I don’t know what’s your opinion on that, but yeah, that’s a short definition from my part.
Sabrina:
Yeah, definitely. And according to my experience, it can also be a big site without a big database of products. It can be less than 1000 products, but if there are users, maybe not a lot of users as well, but if users are buying constantly, like it’s a permanent user database who are buying constantly these things from the website, and it usually happens when it’s some sort of subscription or downloadable product, something not physical. I see this often that a website that doesn’t have a lot of traffic, doesn’t have a huge amount of products, doesn’t have a huge database of users can be counted as a big website because they get all the problems, all the issues that really larger websites get. Have you noticed that as well?
Uros:
Yes, yes. Depending on that. I just didn’t mention that because currently I’m only working with the WooCommerce stores, so they usually have a lot of productivity. But yeah, it also depends on the number of orders, a number of visitor, it does need to be a user that is registered on the site, it’s just a visitor doing the buying and everything. And I should mention that working with this WooCommerce introduced this high performance storage and I would advise that everybody that is concerned about performance switch to high performance storage. I know there are challenges for example, not all plugins are work with the high performance storage, but it is a good future regarding the orders and performance in,
Sabrina:
I’m very curious if you had any experience recently adopt plugins that are not adopted yet by their developers to high performance storage? Because this can be a challenge and usually we would assume that plugins developers would do their best and adopt their plugins to what WooCommerce does, but it’s not always the case. How do you work around that?
Uros:
It’s a good question. So usually either we use our custom solution and then we are safe. But of course there are all sites that we are not cannot create custom solution for everything. So either we try to contact the plugin developer to see if there is an old map or a plan to switch to the high performance storage or we just do some migration in between. Because the commerce also has a migration between one and another. It’s not good for performance. The site will work, the functionality will work, but actually you’re not getting the performance part, but you’re getting the functionality that the client needs. So this is at
Sabrina:
Least it works,
Uros:
At least it works, but in the ideal world, you will wait for the update that the team will work, but sometimes you just need to pick performance or just something to work. But yeah, I agree with that, that the issue is currently that the developers cannot catch up with the changes and that is affecting the sites because yeah, I see in day-to-day work that they’re a lot, I don’t know the number, but pretty much a lot plugins that are not yet using the high performance storage and they’re doing something with orders basically.
Sabrina:
I think that the question here is even wider than using this specific update or using specific high performance storage from WooCommerce, which is quite new. But the situation in general, we both are very active in WordPress community and care about WordPress as a software and community as people and community as people who use WordPress in general. And I’m curious, what is your take on how as a community we can approach such questions? I have most of the work that I do, it’s around core vitals, it’s front end optimization and it’s very, very common that some plugins or some themes are causing issues.
And what I do is just what you mentioned, I try to reach out to plugin developers and say, Hey, there is a problem and it causes problem on all the websites that are using your plugin. And the problem is the same for everyone and here is the solution. Maybe you could do such and such. Sometimes it’s a nice chart and sometimes it gets fixed, but sometimes it leads nowhere, absolutely nowhere. And I’m thinking, do you have any take on how we can approach these cases like community wide?
Uros:
I mean that is a good question and I would always go speak more loudly in the meetups where comes and everything contributor day is trying to get awareness because I think it’s not a problem to address the things as long as people are aware of what is happening. I just don’t think they’re aware. And I mean if you get the community to say, but we need this and then this started being the talks or meetups or groups or Facebook groups, whatever, then the awareness will be higher for the particular issue. And then I think that the people will, because this is demand, if there is a demand for it, it’ll just happen.
But yeah, I just think that the awareness is low in general. I’m not talking only for high performance storage but for the performance in general, the site is working, it’s okay, and then you get some sale or something and then everything is slow. And then the usual definition will be very basically slow. I mean that this is generalizing things and it’s not like if people are more aware what can be slow because of this or that and this is a good practice and this is a bad practice and I just general knowledge needs to be a little bit higher. And then I think that is the end goal to increase general knowledge for multiple areas.
Sabrina:
I feel that it’s like a fine line between getting plugin developers know about the issue and shaming for not fixing them because a lot of plugin developers, it’s just their contribution in their free time and it’s not their day job and it’s normal. Thank you for doing this thing, thank you for making this thing. But they all just like us usual people who have lights on one hand. So sometimes when I face the same issues with same plugins, small plugins usually again and again and I reach back to plugin developers and nothing happens. I have this urge to post something on Twitter, tag them and say, look, there is an issue and so on so forth.
But on the other hand it doesn’t look very polite. Also, this is speaking of meetups and everything, some plugins affect only certain groups of people and certain groups of users that use that plugin and they might be all over across the world. They might have database of people that only use their plugin across the world, not in specific place. And I was just thinking in terms of plugin through review team for example, if we can do some sort of education around this matter, I know they do a lot of work and I know that the team is growing big now, so maybe some sort of standardized approach in terms of performance might help us too.
Uros:
Yeah, first of all, I want to say for the plugin review team, I head down that is the big responsibility, big job. I know they have a lot of on their plate, it’s not easy for them because it’s not like the community is publishing one plugin per month, there are thousands of plugins. But I agree that again, this is the same thing that if there will be a bigger awareness, but again then definition, the most question that I also get is how you test performance.
Because we have different types of people, companies using devoid press WooCommerce for their company or website. So maybe this is just the guessing, but let’s say for 80% of them everything works fine and then you will then force someone to introduce some performance. It’ll say, but why would I need performance? Because everything is looking fine. And then you have these bigger sites that they have some issues because they’re not in those 80% and then you need to satisfy both sides. And again, testing performance on what one thing is testing the clean WordPress without the WooCommerce and couple of plugins and then what happened if you had 10 more plugins or if you have another team that is not the same results that someone recommended.

Possibility of different scenarios of a website is endless and then one test or one recommendation for performance is cannot apply to bigger scale. So that’s also something that, for example, when we do that, this is like a common misunderstanding. If you made one site performance to be good, you cannot just copy paste the things you did there and just apply it to another one because it’s a different site. But I would love to have anything regarding performance saying that for example, this plugin

Performance for example, well with this amount of data or in these conditions like they started doing with WordPress, there is performance team now and they’re doing the measurement of the loading first by et cetera. So they’re doing the performance with all the major versions. But again, this is so concentrated only WordPress and as we know there is no WordPress site without the plugins or a team. So I don’t think there is a site that use only WordPress. So again, those tests I don’t think apply for example on your client that has one team that doesn’t matter, some team and then 10 plugins that are normal plugins to have essential plugins, let’s put it that way.

And I also experienced that for example, you would have a plugin or a team that is stable in this version and let’s say next week they release the new version like WooCommerce 8.5, they introduce some attribute ordering order, something that cash multiple sites and performance was bad. But again, this is only in that version, so that will be fixed in next or it’ll maybe not be fixed. But again, if you put a stamp on this saying this plugin is good for your performance and then the update happened and it can be bad for your performance and then in that case you cannot are you removing the stamp or saying to the client. So there are a lot of challenges in my opinion.
Sabrina:
I’m thinking now as we are talking about this, I’m thinking if we can come up with any basic ideas what would be all websites are different and WooCommerce websites are very, very different one from another, but could there be any basic recommendations for plugin developers in the terms and that would fit everyone? And I was just thinking about one and we have this plugin called plugin check that checks plugins before going to the repository and it checks for escaping for ST data for all this stuff. And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have kind of a reminder there or something or maybe there can be a check made or even just a reminder that if your plugin is not used on certain pages on front end just mind not to load its stuff there. It would help so much.
Uros:
I totally agree with that.
Sabrina:
I can’t think about anything else that basic and that simple that can be reminded to plugin developers, but that can be a start. Do you have something else to add in this basic
Uros:
List? I totally agree with your basic list. I would also just, it doesn’t need to be a step, but just a reminder that one, I’m now talking for a backend stuff and the server stuff. So I would like to remind we can always profile a code if we get it on monthly basis. That is the improvement because at least we are doing it as a developers, we test it, we see that there is an issue and then if you get it first once a month, then maybe once a week, then that can be a routine. And then if more and more people are just testing against, there are a lot of profilers, I’m not talking about the PHP or whatever is on the backend. So again, I would encourage people like you said this is the same, please do a test just to see how it behaves.
Because again, awareness of doing tests can change a lot of things because I think that the most releases are just released with, I don’t want to say zero testing, but the less testing that need to be and then that is also a thing that can be improved and then testing stuff and I like the new feature that was shown I think on the ADE work Met showed it. Now you can go and just live test with the provision in the browser, the plugin or something. So that is an opportunity so you can see and then you can actually see right away with couple of clicks if adding something can slow or break something maybe, I mean if it breaks someone will change it. But again, I just think that the people, if they want to test something, again, they’re not easy use case to test something. So again, if we encourage that and just get the mindset of we need to profile, we need to test, we need to do a Google page, speed lighthouse, whatever, but we need to do it and then change it like that because I don’t think that you can put one definition and that one definition would solve everything but encouraging people to say please run at least one test again against 100 users or whatever. It’s very good for the start
Sabrina:
Just to be clear for people who will listening to us. Do you mean WordPress playground?
Uros:
Yes, yes, I did not mention that. Yeah, WordPress playground.
Sabrina:
The thing is called WordPress playground and this is kind of WordPress playground in the browser and you can see what is happening when you change things in WordPress in browser, it doesn’t require any installation. It’s easy to test. Yeah, that’s another recommendation.
Uros:
And also if again this is, that is one thing that is good because you have a lot of people that just want to test something, they don’t know how to install it locally or they don’t want to edit to the live site because anything can happen. But also in that way, if we can create any kind of easy test or just showing because of this, I mean there are plugins like query Monitor and something like that that you can see that if something is slow or you do the X debug or New Relic or their tools, but those are advanced tools for the people to test and this playground, if there are some tools like that, I think that can help bring awareness and people will maybe address it more. I want to compare it with the SEO and the things like 10 years ago people didn’t know about it and then it started and then everybody learned and now everybody is the expert.
But again, they’re aware that when they have a post or a product, they need to do something in order to be visible in Google. In this case we do the same thing with awareness saying when you do a change that needs to be properly tested or seen in order for your site to perform better in order for you to get a better position on social media or Google. So this is the same thing happens just for the SEO in my opinion, the awareness is now pretty high and for these things like frontend optimization, backup, we are still lacking knowledge if that’s my opinion. I don’t know what you think about it.
Sabrina:
I’m thinking using this opportunity being on this show, maybe we can come up with some least list of steps that imaginable developer can take if they notice there is an issue on their website. Let’s say there is developer who is not performance expert but they notice or they feel like you feel like the website is acting slow. You don’t know in which scenario it’s happening. You don’t know either it’s fronted or backend, you don’t know anything, but it was kind of fine a month ago and now it’s acting weirdly. What if we try to come up with a few steps that they can take to figure out where to look
Uros:
At least? Yeah, I mean I know at least three steps I would try. So let’s say you’re not that experienced, but if that started happening, first thing I would recommend, so easy. So this is not a developer tool, but it’s easy if you can add a plugin there like we talked about it, it’s a query monitor. It can show you if there is some error on the site or if there are some slow queries to the database. So again, I know that there are developers going to say you can see slow queries, MySQL queries on the server. So that is advanced thing, the simplest thing, add a plugin and track, not the best thing, but you can see there if there are some issues, yes, if that doesn’t, let’s say that doesn’t reveal anything or important, then I would suggest now depending on your hosting and server provider, you can check logs.
Let’s say for the people that are not experienced, there are two types of logs. One is the error log and another one is access log. So if you don’t know when is happening or what kind of pages causing it in access log, you can see that. So you can see for example in the last hour you got 1000 views of specific page on the website that has a newsletter and some feed or something and then you can then assume that that something on that page is creating a problem and then you can continue from there. And then in that case you can create test page with only one block or with only feed to see if that is going to behave slowly and then you can eliminate one by one. This is if the page is making a problem. Then you can see also if there is some current jobs or W-P-C-L-I commands and then you can address those.

For example, in multiple cases if you have a big database doing a backup can slow down the site because the database will be locked and then the site cannot do anything. So again, you can move back ups, but you can see those details in the access login error log of the website. Again you cannot see everything there. That would be a second step. And then as a third step, if you want to go more advanced and I want to be actively doing on performance, there are tools that I would recommend that you can use New Relic, you can use X debug or you can use black fire. All those three tools are testing your code performance. So you can record the whole page and then it’ll tell you exactly how many queries, what function is called, how many times the function is called, which file is, so everything how it’s behaving in the background for you.

And then from there you can then pick saying, okay, this plugin is taking five seconds to load on this specific page to I really need this plugin or can this be changed? Can I introduce some caching plugin, can I? But those are a little bit more advanced tools but I would spend some time to get familiar just to point, again, those are the similar tools, so this is not, you need to do all three of those. So just once more, this is black fire, new Relic and X debug. Some of them are free, some of them have a paid plan. So again, you don’t need all three but you start at least with one. And then again, if you want to test the front end and just the Google Pay speed, you can use Lighthouse or does Google speed or maybe you have some suggestion because I’m not that familiar with mostly front end.

But yeah as a three steps to sum it up from my part one is query monitor, easy, good things about it. It’s pretty user friendly. You can just see what’s happening and there is if something is red, you know that strong. So it’s easy to find the bottlenecks. The second one would be check the logs on the server, both access and error logs and then PHP errors or something like that. And the third one is use one of the tools like Black Fire, new Relic or X debug and again you’ll find issues with plugins but then this is awareness I’m talking about. But yes, what would your steps be?
Sabrina:
I will be talking now not about my personal steps when I’m hired top to my someone websites, but steps that someone who is not performance expert but just a developer can take to identify what’s happening and if something is happening because this is the beginning of the process. So let’s say you just notice something is off. I would recommend to start with narrowing down the problem if I think it might be overwhelming for the person who is not used to a lot of performance information, open reports, look there without knowing what you’re looking for without hypothesis, it’s hard to diverse. What’s important from what is not important, it’s just overwhelming amount of information if you don’t background, if you don’t experience to know what you are searching for. So I would recommend to first identify if the problem exists and if so where it does exist probably I would recommend to go first thing to Google search console and check your core web vitals data and see if there are any issues there.
So Google Search console is place where in page size there is a small thing where you have core web vitals assessment. This is real field data from your website, but it comes from the bigger source of information and the more detailed report can be found in Google search console. There is a tab there called core vitals. You can go there and you can check if your core vitals assessment is passing, if your website is passing core vitals assessment, right? And this might be the first indicated to you. So if the website is passing core web vitals assessment, especially on LCP and first input delay, which will soon be replaced with INP interactive to next paint. So if it passing on this two, it means that real users don’t have problems with speed on your website on front end, but if at the same time you have the feeling that something is off, something is loading slowly, I would try to differentiate probably if it’s happening only when you locked in, if it’s happening for locked in users and it’s not happening for locked out users and then you will have the answer.

If it’s not happening for locked out users, there are no issues with core web vitals, then this issue most likely will be connected with something on backend that is cached or mitigated by something on front end for locked off users. Okay, this is already a lot of information for us. We already know that we should be looking in the backend because it’s happening in the backend and from this point we can install. I would recommend install query, monitor and looking there. But again, when you install query monitor, there is a huge amount of information there. If you don’t know where you are looking at, it’s easy to get lost. And some websites they have a lot of issues. This happens to my clients a lot. They see that the website have a lot of issues, there are errors, there are slow queries, there are a lot of sales and scripts loading.
There is a version of PHP that is not the latest one. Even not close to latest one, object cash is not used and they do not know where to start. There are so many issues I would recommend to pinpoint what is the most easy thing to fix and the most easy things to fix are usually basic ones First it’s PP version. It would be so easy to, it’s really, really easy to fix. You just upgrade server to high PHP version test there. Your website if all plugins play well with it, you keep it going. Then I just remembered. Now the thing that is often overlooked, there is a theme that we have in WordPress that is called Ability memory limit and by default it’s set to 40 megabytes and I see a lot of cases when this default number hasn’t been changed. For years the site was surviving somehow, but now it’s not because 40 megabytes, it’s very, very low number.
I agree with that. That’s fine. It would be funny. Yeah, it would be. No indeed it’s so funny.
But it happens often. I see that they are upgrading their hosting, they’re paying for say two gigabytes of RAM on their hosting, but there is a limit set in their WordPress to 40 gigabytes. So they never use what they’re paying for. By the way query monitor is showing that thing. So if you have limit for W memory limit set to the default to 40 megabytes, you’ll see that in query monitor. So that would be another very easiest thing to fix. I would recommend for someone who is not before hiring someone like me or there are things that you can check and fix yourself easily and if after that the problem doesn’t disappear, that that is a sign there is a problem that this is a sign you should seek for help.

But from such easy ones, let me think, object caching can be a very good idea and query Monitor is showing that as well. It shows you sometimes it can be misleading. In query monitor it says like object caching plugin is not in use and it’s a little bit misleading because you should check numbers next to this line saying so many hits and so many cached and if you have from 100%, you have 95% cashed, that’s fine. It means queer caching is working. It’s just you’re not using the plugin to manage it, but it is working. There is nothing to worry about. So my recommendation would be first of all separate, try to figure out if it’s frontend or backend by going to core web vitals. Then going as locked in user and trying to figure out if it’s backend or frontend. If it’s backend, it’s still query monitor, look at query basic things like WP memory limit meet application.
Uros:
You can also look for the MySQL version because that is the same like P version. There are new versions that are improving the database thing. So that is also, and most of the server hosting allow you to upgrade that as well, like PHP. So try to be on the latest version as you can that nothing is breaking. But yeah,
Sabrina:
Easy things to do, right? What else? Easy things to fix. We can see in query monitor without touching or error, slow database queries and so on. Let’s think.
Uros:
I mean you can always check if you have the plugins that are activated on the site and you’re not using it anymore or you have multiple plugins for the same things over the years. For example, the first year you have plugin number one, then you did not disable it, you had a plugin number two, then plugin number three and now only plugin number three is doing specific thing. And for example, wishlist, you have three wishlist plugin plugins and you only use one, so please remove the other two that are not in use because that is easy for the person to do because again, that is the person that knows their sites so they know if they’re using it or not. This is easy or at least deactivated it. You don’t need to delete it, just deactivate the plugin.
Sabrina:
Exactly. This is a brilliant recommendation. This is so basic but people are overlooking it. Yeah, go to plugins, examine what is not in use, deactivated, disabled, delete, and if the problem stays, the next step will be deactivating your plugins. See if problems stay. If problems stay, then it means the problem is in your theme roll back to centered theme. If problems taste, then something is wrong with either WordPress or server, which is not a good news, but it is the result. It can be a virus, it can be something happening on your website, but you can narrow down like this. So activating your plugins, if the problem disappeared, it means one, it’s one of the plugins.
Try activating in groups. Figure out which plugin plugin is causing the most impact because usually it’s the combination of all plugins, but sometimes you are lucky and you can see that it’s one plugin that is causing 30 40% of slowness and do that while having query monitor to own. You can open this plugin page in one tab and have query monitor to own say on homepage in another tab and updating homepage while disabling enabling plugins to see how numbers change there. And that might give you some information. Let’s think what else can be simply done? How could we forget, get abandoned post matter transient and such and such? What would be your recommendation for people to figure this out and fix this for those who are not performance engineers, but what can be done from graph interface
Uros:
For the WooCommerce? I know days you can just go to the status page of the settings of the WooCommerce and you can clear the tent, you can clean sessions, you can clean unused variation trials and that kind of stuff. So WooCommerce has their own user interface that you can just click or you can just, for example, there is a slow tasks in that direction when they’re like you need to regenerate the attributes or something. They already build a tools for that, so you just click on the buttons. They’re pretty simple. Nothing, just click on the buttons without WooCommerce. I’m pretty not sure what’s the latest in that area. Now I suppose I know that there are a couple of plugins that can optimize clean up the unnecessary things from the database. So why would if no, this is talking for non-developers because for the developers you can clean it on your own.
You don’t need the plugin, but there are plugins that are optimizing and cleaning the database of the unused things. So I would try with one of those to see how it’s going to behave. But I would also add, if you add some query, monitor or plugin to optimize the database, when you finish looking or doing the thing, please disable the plugin. The query monitor is taking the research from the server, so after you do your investigation, please disable it because there is again that mistake of leaving query mount or a database cleaner or whatever it’s called. And it can cause your site to be slow just because you forget to disable it so that also don’t forget to clean up after you as well.
Sabrina:
Just to add to this, this is a very usual scenario when debug walk is on, and this is high attendant, high visited website and writing error log, its up resources on the website and writing error log is the main issue with performance. So just to be clear, error log and query monitor and things like this, they should be activated for short period of time for discover and fixing process and then they should be deactivated because they’re taking up a lot of resources
Uros:
Of course. So when you finish with something and that is not a default part of the website, you disabled it, that’s your rule number one, whatever you’re doing, whatever things that you’re testing or for example, this is again not maybe easy for every user, but if you change something on a server just to test it, return it back. Because if you’re not sure what you’re doing, you are maybe creating more issues than you’re helping yourself. So just be careful.
Sabrina:
I just remembered now the simple thing that can be checked. So a lot of hosting providers let you have as much staging environments, development environments as you wish, and some people generously use it. They would have few development websites staging a website that were used like two years ago and then abandoned, never updated, never used again. Just be mindful that your package with hosting provider, your resources are distributed through all instances that you have on that server.
So if you have on the same server, you have your production website and then stage your website and then development website and then another development website, it means that all resources are distributed between four websites. Yes, those three, they are not visited as much as the first one, but they’re eating up a lot of resources. So if you are not using staging and development versions, they should be removed as well. This is another leak of performance on the service side
Uros:
And especially if they have some current jobs or something that is earning in background when you visited, even if you’re the only one visiting the site, it’s going to trigger the things that are going to write to the database or to the server and then you’re creating issues for no reason. But yeah,
Sabrina:
I think the most common issue with SEO is when people create staging and development environment and they forget to put the checkbox there, like ask Google not to index my website. This is very simple, very basic, but people forget to do this and then all of a sudden they have duplicated content and they have issues with traffic and with everything. This is the very similar thing. If you are creating a copy of your website on the same server, it’ll be taking resources from your production. Just keep that in mind.
Uros:
Yeah, I totally agree.
Sabrina:
Shall we summarize what we were talking about today?
Uros:
I can do it for the backend stuff again, my recommendation to test the code, the backend stuff of the code would be from the simple steps depending on your level of knowledge is. So query monitor as the first one, check everything, what he’s saying to you. The second one would be check the access log and error log on the server just to get familiar what’s happening there and what are the pages that I visited mostly and if there are any errors.
And the third one for the experienced one or for the people want to get started with performance or anything you can do. There’s the I debug, there is a black fire and there’s a new relic, three tools, very good tools to monitor the database, to monitor the code, to monitor the visitors, whatever you want to monitor. So get familiar with that. Those would be the three steps and I would like to, for all the people who are listening to us to say we need to get awareness of the performance and slow code to more people, to spread it, to make it easy for people to understand what is the issue and not just saying WordPress is slow or WordPress is not slow.

So it can scale, it can be pretty speedy. Just needs to be used properly. So that would be short summary from my side
Sabrina:
And the same thing people say about tools.
Uros:
Yep. I mean that applies.
Sabrina:
Yeah, it applies. It depends on how you use it and also it depends on what else is playing in the same playground. Sometimes in query monitor you will see that such and such WooCommerce or WordPress function function causes issue this and this is slow, but the source of this problem might be laying out of WordPress, out of WooCommerce, but in satellite plugin that are using their functions to read this error, to read this stack, what’s happening step by step. You have to use tools like query and so on. And you have to read carefully what is called, where the issue is happening and try to narrow down to the problem to where it originates from.
Uros:
Yeah, I agree that because there are let’s say plugins or functions that are misused or used in the wrong way and then that can be misleading that the VU is the problem, but actually some other plugins. But just be careful and look for the don’t grab for one thing, just look outside of the scope a little bit and yeah, you’re safe.
Sabrina:
Ru thank you so much for the company in this show today. It was a lovely chat. I’m sure we could have been talking about performance from your side, from backend, from my side, from mostly front end forever. I hope that this chat was useful.
Uros:
Maybe they want to hear more and then we can do another show. But we can do any kind of topic regarding performance. We can only front end, only backend or we can just continue talking. But yeah, it was nice to talk to you about the performance and to people who are listening to us and hopefully we are going to talk soon again.
Sabrina:
Thank you and thank you for everyone who is listening. Thank you to Bob for hosting us.
Uros:
Thank you. Cheers.

Thanks to our Pod Friends for their support

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: New Woo Dev Docs, Woo Product Lead in the Wild, and Spelling Ecommerce


February 2, 2024

Well, let’s start off with something that is very, very cool. The new WooCommerce Developer Documentation that was quietly release at https://developer.woo.com/docs/. Although you may not find me hanging around there much, I will say my first thought when I landed on it was affirmation that it has been organized and redone exactly to help developer support. In fact, I have seen several comments here and there already praising it and sharing how much easier it is for them to find documentation. So congrats to the team that did all that hard work.

I Googled Woo

I have to share this real quickly if you don’t catch it over on BobWP. I googled Woo. Just W o o. And yes, Woo.com, although at the bottom, did make the first page. That was quite impressive.

James Kemp, new product lead at Woo

Some of you likely know James Kemp from IconicWP. Well, if you are not aware, in December he took the role of Product Lead at Automattic for WooCommerce. So congrats to James and this is good news for the Woo builder community. The reason I mention this is that James has taken it on himself to be more of a public face from Woo. And by that I mean he is out in the wild sharing all sorts of cool stuff as product lead. Also there is the fact that he has been on this podcast 6 times and I feel that number will expotentially grow very soon.

With that said, follow him on Twitter if you hang there @jamesckemp as well as his new blog where he shared that he will be sharing deep dives of things they are working on at Woo. That site is jameskemp.blog

You say eCommerce and I say ecommerce

Oh, as I am doing this episode I get sidetracked from James with a poll he did on Twitter asking if you spell eCommerce with a lowercase e, uppercase C, all lowercase or hyphenated. The results with 203 votes is 39.4% eCommerce, 25.1%, ecommerce, 18.7% e-commerce and even a mention about the Ecommerce way of spelling it. Just shows that there is no standard. Myself, I have been a mix of the first two over the years, and trying to break that habit to go all lowercase. Interestingly James said at Woo they are also leaning towards lowercase. We stopped the capital M in email quite sometime ago, maybe it’s time to do the same with ecommerce. Because hey, it’s another very common word used everywhere so why not?

What’s new with Woo?

I leave you with one more nugget. I have been working on a show called Inside Woo. Some of our past episodes are under that show, but moving forward there is going to be some cool stuff. So with a little discussion over at Woo, you may be seeing a new monthly show here called “New at Woo”. More on that soon.

 

Thanks to our Pod Friends for their support

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 08:00 PM under Uncategorized

WPTavern: #113 – Shawn Hooper on Launching WordCamp Canada (WCEH)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox has a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the first ever WordCamp Canada.

If you’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 WP tavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL in term, most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to WP Tavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Shawn Hooper. Shawn is a key figure in the Canadian WordPress community. He’s an advocate for national and local gatherings that bring WordPress enthusiasts together.

I have to say a special thanks to Shawn for stepping in at the 11th hour to do this podcast recording with me. He was not the guest originally lined up, and so I’m pleased that he was able to join me to get this important topic some attention.

So later this year, the first ever WordCamp Canada or WCEH, W-C-E-H for short, will be held in Ottawa. The event is deep in the planning stages. The venue is secured, the speakers have been finalized, and it’s now up to the team of volunteers, of which Shawn is one, to make the event a success.

We talk about why the Canadian community felt the need for a national event. It’s not typical to have events based upon a country, although WordCamp US is a notable exception. Shawn explains how, after Covid, the community has not got back to where it was, and how an event like this might act as a catalyst to more participation.

We get into the challenges of creating an event of this scale. From conception until now there’s a lot of moving parts. The venue, food, transport, volunteers, sponsors, speakers. The list could go on. It all needs to be planned, tasks assigned, and executed.

Shawn tells me about the geography of Canada, and how the sheer size of the country makes gathering a challenge.

We also touch upon how, if the event is successful, it’ll move through different locations year by year. The team are hoping that an event such as WCEH will act as an inspiration for other locales to take up the idea of larger events. And I’m sure that many in the community will be paying close attention to how this event is executed.

If attending WordPress events, and volunteering your time, is your thing, this episode is for you. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WP Tavern.com forward slash podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Shawn Hooper.

I am joined on the podcast today by Shawn Hooper. Hi there, Shawn.

[00:03:38] Shawn Hooper: Hi Nathan. Nice to be with you.

[00:03:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, thank you for joining me today. I was due to do this podcast with somebody else, but that somebody else has pointed me in your direction. We won’t go into the reasons why, but I really do appreciate you coming on at the 11th hour, to talk to me about a subject, because I know it’s fairly time sensitive.

Had the stars aligned, I would’ve had this podcast out weeks and weeks ago. But they didn’t. And so we’re going to talk about the topic at hand, which is very exciting. Something new in the WordPress space. Something called WordCamp Canada. It’s obvious from what I’ve just said, what it is, but I’m just going to throw out that that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. It’ll be all about WordCamp Canada.

Shawn, a little bit about you first, if that’s okay? Can you just tell us who you are, how long you’ve been using WordPress? A short WordPressy bio, if you like.

[00:04:27] Shawn Hooper: Sure. So I am a WordPress developer, I guess is my best description in this space. I’ve spoke at WordCamps in Canada and the US from, starting 2014 until now. Definitely involved in the WordPress community, both as a contributor and a, to the code base, and as a community contributor. And involved in some of our local meetups here as well.

[00:04:49] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Thank you for that. So a friend of WordPress. I’m guessing, the fact that you’re on the podcast, I’m guessing that you live in Canada. If not, what the heck? Where are you based?

[00:05:00] Shawn Hooper: I am in Canada’s Capital. I’m in Ottawa, which happens to also be the first host city of WordCamp Canada.

[00:05:06] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. There we go. So we’ve got all the credentials that we need. So we are going to talk about WordCamp Canada, and the fact that it’s going to be starting this year. So it’s the inaugural event. But first of all, I just want to address the state of WordPress events, and the community in Canada.

I know that over the last few years, especially post Covid, the WordPress community has taken a bit of a hit. But, do you just want to paint a picture of where we were in 2023, with the WordPress community in Canada? Were events still going on in person? Was there dwindling levels of contribution, and turning out to events? Had it all gone online? Those kind of things.

[00:05:43] Shawn Hooper: In 2023, we still saw a mix of hybrid and in-person meetups. And in terms of the WordCamps themselves, Vancouver had an in-person camp in the fall. I think it was in September last year. And Montreal had a virtual camp. But apart from those two cities, the in-person events have not come back near to the state that they were before the pandemic.

[00:06:08] Nathan Wrigley: So prior to the pandemic, things were a little bit more engaged. There were just more events, more contribution, more volunteering, all of that kind of thing. And its sort of tailed off a little bit.

[00:06:17] Shawn Hooper: Absolutely. I think before the pandemic, there was probably just under a dozen cities that had WordCamps across the country. Mostly in the central region of the country, but also some in the west and east coast as well. And as I said, Vancouver and Montreal are the only two so far to have had events, and Montreal’s was virtual.

[00:06:37] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So, do you know why? I mean, I don’t know if you were on the initial set of discussions that brought this event to life. But, can you just give us an inkling as to why Canada as a whole decided? Well, not every Canadian I would imagine, but, you know, the WordPress community in Canada, as a whole decided to go for a country based event.

Because traditionally, as you’ve said, these kind of events are locked down to cities. We have a notable exception in WordCamp US, but just about everywhere else, even the bigger ones, is a European endeavor. So WordCamp Europe and Asia, and so on and so forth. And everything else is either in the meet up category, in which case it’s very localised, or it’s based upon a city. So something like, oh I don’t know, WordCamp London, or something along those lines. How was it decided that you wanted to just do this one big event, to cover the whole of Canada?

[00:07:28] Shawn Hooper: I think there’s multiple aspects to that. One, I mean, we’ve talked about reigniting the communities that have dwindled since the pandemic. Canada is a very large country. And so to get everybody into one city, and have a big event, seemed like a fantastic way, for even Canadians to get to know each other in the WordPress space, who might have been disconnected in these various communities around the country.

Also having a Canadian event, seemed like a great opportunity to showcase that we had a community here. Because so much of the attention does go to WordCamp US, which is immediately to our south. They’re our next door neighbor. And that’s an event that many of us have felt, really should have always been WordCamp Americas. Rather than WordCamp US.

We have WordCamp Asia, or WordCamp Europe, which are really multi-country events. And then you had WordCamp US as this flagship, and we wanted the opportunity to show that, you know, right up above them is Canada with this thriving community as well.

[00:08:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess the intention really isn’t to cause some kind of rivalry. But if WordCamp US is going to continue to be called that, as opposed to, as you said, WordCamp North America, or something like that, then why not have your own event and bind all the Canadian WordPresses together.

You talked about the size of the country, and I’ve been lucky enough to travel across parts of Canada. I think it’s easy to really misunderstand how big Canada is, if you haven’t been, but it is prodigiously large. I don’t know what the scale is, in terms of numbers to the US, but it’s obviously as wide, if not wider, because it extends out to the east a little bit more.

How easy for Canadians, in particular, is it going to be to get around? Do you have a really comprehensive network of flights? Realistically, if you’re on the wrong side, in air quotes, of Canada to the event, then getting there by car is really, completely out the question. Because it’s going to be a week in the car, just trying to get there, as opposed to hopefully a few, few hours the air, right.

[00:09:27] Shawn Hooper: Exactly. I mean, as I was saying to you before we started the recording, if I got my car, and I’m in Ottawa, in central Canada. If I wanted to get to the next provincial border, to the west, I would be driving another 22 hours from where I am, just to get to the next provincial border. Yeah, it’s a huge country. And so to get here for the camp, if you live in Central Canada, you could drive, you can take the train. But anywhere outside of that, yeah, you’re definitely relying on air travel.

[00:09:56] Nathan Wrigley: In terms of the people who’ve organised the event, I guess one of the things that you don’t wish to do, is to ostracize the people who’ve been carrying out these city events, although they may have dwindled in number. You know, you mentioned that there’s a few that are going on.

I guess the intention with creating WordCamp Canada, is not to create a sense of tension with those events. And maybe there are some of the same people organising those, as others. But were those conversations that you had? So you mentioned Vancouver, I think it was Vancouver that you mentioned.

Having a conversation with them saying, we’re going to do this event, the intention really isn’t to eat your lunch, or anything like that. I just wondered if any of that had happened, so that you weren’t annoying parts of the community that have been involved, and revitalising it in their own area post covid anyway.

[00:10:42] Shawn Hooper: Absolutely. We reached out to a lot of the organisers that we knew from other cities, from their meetup groups, and tried to get their organisers involved in WordCamp Canada as well. Vancouver in particular, their lead organiser, at least in the early days of planning WordCamp Canada, was on our organising team. He had to step back for other reasons, but we do have that participation there.

And I think where we sit now, in 2024, with the local camps not having really come back online yet, is this was a great time to do the Canadian camp, without stepping on the toes of the local camps, because they’re not there yet. So doing it now is great timing.

[00:11:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s a bit of nice serendipity that. Maybe WordCamp Canada had been mooted by the community, and just never happened, because there were lots of events already. And now that there’s a paucity of events, sort of deficit, if you like, yeah, this does seem like a really good time.

So I guess we should talk about the event in particular. So this is WordCamp Canada 2024. Just tell us where it is, and what the dates are, and so on? Just so that we can get an idea of putting it in our calendars, and thinking about where we’ve got to fly to and from, and all of that.

[00:11:51] Shawn Hooper: So, yeah, it is the inaugural WordCamp Canada, happening here in Ottawa, at the Infinity Convention Center, from July 11th to the 13th. The 11th is a contributor day, and the 12th and 13th are the main camp.

[00:12:07] Nathan Wrigley: Do you have any intuition as to what the capacity is? In other words, how many attendee tickets have you got available? I’m guessing that they’re still to go on sale, or if they’re on sale, they probably haven’t run out yet. So, what’s the attendance count?

[00:12:21] Shawn Hooper: The capacity of the building is a thousand people. And so I think we’re hoping for the attendee count to be 800 or so plus volunteers and organisers, and everyone else. And yeah, which would be much larger than any of our local city camps had ever been. And so that capacity allows us to really shine on the national level, rather than look like another local camp.

[00:12:46] Nathan Wrigley: I know that in North America, there is this sort of comedic rivalry between Canada and the US, and it’s a bit of fun in most cases, I imagine. Let’s imagine the same thing is here. I’m presuming that you’re also hoping, because of the proximity, it’s very likely that if you live in the United States, you are going to be closer to Ottawa, than certain parts of Canada.

So I’m guessing that this is, I’m imagining it’s really being pitched at the international community. But I’m imagining also that you’re hoping that a fair bunch of citizens of the US are going to show up as well, right?

[00:13:22] Shawn Hooper: There’s definitely been interest from Americans in attending this event. And, I mean, we have a very good relationship with a lot of our American WordPress counterparts. I know, for example, the community in Rochester has a very strong relationship with a few of the camps in central Canada, because we’re in driving distance still. We volunteered each other’s events, and attend each other’s events. There is definitely that American interest.

And the other thing that we are hearing too, is people from the international community, looking at WordCamp Canada as an alternative to attending WordCamp US. In that, in terms of maybe it’s easier for them to get into Canada, than it is to get into the US. In terms of getting a visa, or other travel restrictions, that Canada looks like an appealing alternative to attend an event in North America.

[00:14:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, interesting. Well, we’ll have to see, I guess, how ticket sales and what have you go. We’ll get all into that a little bit later. But I notice it’s in the month of July. You’re in the Northern Hemisphere, so July is slap bang in the middle of the warm part of the year. And I know this is really nothing to do with WordPress itself, but I am curious as to whether, literally it’s a question about weather, but that one had an h in it. Whether or not, you are going to in the future, move that around a little bit.

Because there is something highly engaging about going somewhere where there’s snow, if you are from a part of the world where there is no snow. But I’m guessing the first one, you’ve done it right in the middle of summer, because that’s the easiest time to get around, and it’s basically not freezing cold like Canada would be in different months.

So really a question, do you intend in the future to always hold it in the summer, or would you flip it around to benefit from the cold weather that you get? Which probably doesn’t sound like a benefit.

[00:15:02] Shawn Hooper: And it’s funny, I haven’t thought of winter as being a benefit to hosting an event like this. The Canadian WordCamps historically have been, I’d say between May and October maybe. And that’s where you get the nicer weather. The snow is not on the ground. And if you want to include any tourism aspect to going to a WordCamp, if you like to explore whatever city a camp is in, it’s much nicer to be a pedestrian, walk around Ottawa when it’s nicer out in the summer, and there’s more tourist things to do, and the city’s more alive than it might be in winter. So I think really, it would depend on who the next host city is, and whether there’s a big attraction to having something going on there in the winter.

[00:15:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think, again, most people who are listening to this, who are not Canadians, maybe if you’re living in the northern part of the United States or something like that, or Sweden or somewhere. It’s difficult to describe just how cold Canada can get at various points of the year, but there’s always skiing.

[00:16:01] Shawn Hooper: There is. I think even in planning a winter event, there’s considerations of, for the community that’s traveling internationally is, do they have appropriate clothing for the winter? You know, something as simple as that, that you have to consider.

[00:16:13] Nathan Wrigley: So, how easy was it to pitch the idea to WordCamp Central? So, if you’re listening to this, the whole WordCamp process is governed, and maintained, and administered by WordCamp Central. And because country events are not at all common, I wondered how straightforward it was to describe to them the vision of a Canadian event, and for them to accept that. So yeah, just talk us through that process, how easy it was, how difficult it was.

[00:16:42] Shawn Hooper: So we have been quietly pitching this idea for several years now, talking to friends around the community. And this year at WordCamp US, Shanta Nathwani, who is on our organising committee, and myself approached Kevin Cristiano from Central, and had a chat about this idea. And Kevin has been a wonderful supporter of this idea. And so he was crucial in getting this idea moved forward through Central.

But this time around, I think given the timing, and trying to get WordCamps back and running in the country, it actually came together quite easily, in terms of getting the approval for the idea and concept.

The hardest part of organising this, I think to date, was finding an appropriate venue for a national sized camp, without being a flagship WordCamp. There are only three flagships, that’s US, EU and Asia. So in terms of Central’s terminology, we are a regional camp. And so we don’t have, the budget of a flagship. And so it was finding a venue that fit into that kind of category.

[00:17:53] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I see. So the flagship events that you described, Asia, US, and EU, there’s different financial constraints about what they can do. So they have a bigger pot to pull from. They obviously, the expectation is they have a bigger audience as well.

But that’s interesting. Okay. So despite the fact that it’s got the same kind of name as WordCamp US, WordCamp Canada is going to have different constraints on what you can do. So you had to find, cut your cloth, if you like, to find a location, which would accommodate the budget that you’ve been given. That’s interesting,

[00:18:21] Shawn Hooper: The budget that we’re given, and also the, what we hope we’re going to attract in terms of an audience. We looked at, you know, your typical WordCamps are held in university or college campuses. And looking around, you know, there was nothing that fit the attendance that we wanted in the venues that were available.

And so you had to start looking at conference centers, hotels, venues like that, which are just inherently more expensive to host an event in. And so that was more the challenge, was finding something that fit there. The idea of having national camp, and trying this out for the first time, central was absolutely behind from the beginning.

[00:18:56] Nathan Wrigley: So the Infinity Convention Center in Ottawa, I’m guessing that came in on budget. You’ve got a thousand people maximum, as opposed to several thousand for the other flagship events.

One thing that we haven’t mentioned so far, and you’ll have to explain this. WordCamp Asia is abbreviated to WCAsia. WordCamp Europe is abbreviated to WCEU, where EU maps directly to European Union. WordCamp US is WCUS, it all makes sense so far, following a very logical pattern. Except, wait for it, WordCamp Canada, which I was expecting to be WCCA, or something like that, is WCEH. And I was, in a puzzled way, looking at this thinking, I literally can’t work this out. And I’m sure that if you’re not Canadian, or at least don’t know any Canadians, this won’t make sense either. But you are going to have to explain.

[00:19:52] Shawn Hooper: Canadians have a stereotyped habit of ending a lot of our sentences with eh, which is spelled EH. Nice day out, eh? That kind of use. And so, following one of the Southern camps, I think it’s.

[00:20:11] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, WordCamp Y’all, is it?

[00:20:13] Shawn Hooper: Yeah it’s, WordCamp Y’all is where we got the idea. I can’t remember which camp uses that.

[00:20:18] Nathan Wrigley: Birmingham.

[00:20:19] Shawn Hooper: Yeah, it’s Birmingham. Thank you. We thought that was brilliant, and so we took that, and used our own kind of expression in our acronym as well. So WCEH became a thing. I think WCCA would’ve been an alternative, but that also causes a bit of confusion when you’re in North America, around California, which uses CA as their state acronym.

[00:20:41] Nathan Wrigley: I think that’s brilliant. I love a bit of humor, and I thought that was really good. It certainly had me puzzled for a while, because I was just assuming it was a two letter acronym for something. I assumed it was the location of the city or something like that.

Is this going to be a peripatetic event? Is it going to remain in Ottowa for good? You know, each year, 2025, 2026, or what have you. Or, is the intention to move it around to the different locations over the years?

[00:21:05] Shawn Hooper: We definitely want it to move around the country. Canada is so different from coast to coast, that I think there’s an excellent opportunity with this event, to showcase Canada. And to keep it in one city all the time, would really just not achieve that goal. And I think there’s great opportunities for other cities, across the country, to showcase their cities, while hosting the WordPress community.

[00:21:27] Nathan Wrigley: One of the fun things about attending some of the flagship events, is that right at the very end, they have this, it’s almost like that Steve Jobs moment, when he always used to say at Apple events, oh, and there’s one more thing. Right at the end, they always tell you where the next event is going to be.

I just wondered if you’ve already, now don’t obviously reveal anything. If you know something, certainly don’t reveal it. But, is that something that you have to be mindful of? Have you already started the process of 2025? Or, given the nature of the first time that you’re running this, is this more a case of, look, let’s just get this one in the bag, and then we can work it out from there?

Because often, you’ve got to secure the venue, and all of those kind of things, like a whole 12 months plus out, just because they disappear, don’t they? These are popular events, and so on.

[00:22:13] Shawn Hooper: They are, and so we have not selected a city for the next camp yet. I think the real test is, let’s see how this one goes first, because it is the first one. We believe it’s going to be a very successful event. There’s a lot of positive reactions we’ve had, to announcing this event. But we definitely need to make sure this one happens, and happens well first, before we can announce the second one.

[00:22:33] Nathan Wrigley: I think that’s very sensible. It would be apropos to just get this one under the belt, and make sure it’s a complete success. Let’s talk about its success. Let’s talk about the bits and pieces that are going to make up the event.

There’s all sorts of talk at the moment about, we haven’t really settled on a particular term, but next gen events is the phrase which I kept hearing. The idea being, in order to try to get the community to come back, post pandemic, let’s just change things a little bit. Not wholesale, dropping everything that everybody loved, but let’s introduce some new things. So that might he, oh I don’t know, inviting people from outside of the WordPress community to come. Having a particular focus at that event could be, for example SEO, or AI, or something like that, just as examples. Any number of things.

And I did wonder if you were going to run a traditional event. You mentioned a contributor day and then, you know, the speaker day with the tracks, and all that. I just wondered if there was anything different, unique, that you’ve been planning.

[00:23:28] Shawn Hooper: So we definitely have a bit of a community focus on this event. We do want to highlight a few things, such as working with underrepresented communities. We are looking in Canada, indigenous stories are very important. So we’re looking to have something included about the indigenous perspective in Canada, at this event.

As well as, in terms of trying something new, we’re also attaching onto the camp, the opportunity for companies to host their own meetups before or after the camp. And help facilitate, essentially team get togethers around the camp as well. With the thinking being that, with travel in Canada, again, it’s a large country, travel is expensive. If everyone’s going to be in town anyway for a camp, companies might as well have their team get togethers while they’re here.

[00:24:19] Nathan Wrigley: That is interesting. I’ve definitely not heard that before. Okay, so there’s some new focus, especially the ones that piqued my interest there were the corporate meetups, as you’ve just described. But also the potential indigenous focus, that’s going to be really interesting.

[00:24:32] Shawn Hooper: And the other focus I should mention as well, is on multilingual topics. We are a country with two official languages, and making websites in English and French is just something we do here. And it’s often a topic that is missed in a lot of the WordCamps in the US. And so we kind of want to highlight that at ours as well.

[00:24:49] Nathan Wrigley: Are you going to be transcribing the bits and pieces? And if you are, what I mean by that is, let’s say there’s a video screen and it’s showing everything that’s happening, and maybe broadcasting out live, maybe not, I’m not sure if you’re going to be doing that. But do you have a legal requirement to offer the transcription service, in both of the official languages English and French?

Because my understanding is, in more or less every aspect of public life, if you publish something in English, like I guess a road sign or something like that, you also have to include the equivalent in French. So yeah, that was a curious question about transcription, and obviously the marketing of it, and the media that you’re putting out, and blog posts and all of that.

[00:25:26] Shawn Hooper: So we’re not legally required to. We’re not a government entity that’s putting on this event. However, we will be publishing, our website is currently being translated. So the website will be available in both languages. We are accepting talks in both languages. We’re making sure that some of our volunteers can speak both languages.

So that generally, we are offering support for both official languages. And we’ll see how that balance works out when we start looking at the speaker’s submissions. But we definitely want to include French Canadians in this event. You know, and talking about the many different communities in Canada, that’s an extremely important one.

[00:26:01] Nathan Wrigley: We’re recording this in the middle of March 2024, and in the conversation that we had prior to pressing the record button, it sounds like when this podcast is published, at the very earliest, the speaker process will have closed. So that, at least, we hope is all tied up.

But you are, as is probably the case for most WordPress events, you’ve got a couple of other areas where people can be engaged, and that would be sponsorship, and obviously volunteers.

I don’t know if there are some terminal dates on when those things close, but are you in the market for sponsorship, or have you tied all those slots up? And again, just volunteers helping out at the event, organising the event, showing up and being present at the event. Just tell us a little bit about that.

[00:26:47] Shawn Hooper: So yeah, our call for sponsors, and our call for volunteers will still be open. And I think they will remain open, probably until the event, if people want to offer their support in either of those ways, we’re not going to say no. And we do need sponsorship. As I said, this is not a cheap event to put on. It’s a larger event than a city based camp might be, in terms of venue costs and food, and all of that.

Definitely still looking for sponsors. And of course, you can’t have an event like this without volunteers. And for three days, including the contributor day, there’s a lot of different volunteer positions available. I’m hoping to see a lot of Canadians come out and offer to help volunteer at this event. And so yeah, both of those are open. The calls are on our website at canada.wordcamp.org, and you can sign up on there.

[00:27:33] Nathan Wrigley: I will put a link in the show notes to the various different pages, for signing up to be a volunteer, or signing up to be a sponsor. As I said, the speaker section is all but tied up as we’re speaking, but by the date this could be published, at it’s earliest opportunity, that moment will have passed.

I should say that Matt Graham and I had organised to have this podcast. We alluded to that at the beginning, and the intention was very much to enable more speakers to apply. But sadly, the way that the universe aligned, that didn’t happen. But we are where we are. So speakers is done, but volunteers and sponsors are still very much welcome.

Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of how many speakers you’re going to have? Is it spread across a number of tracks, or is it all focused on one track? Do you have workshops? And I know that you haven’t finalised it, but do you have any intuitions as to how that might look?

[00:28:22] Shawn Hooper: Yeah, we’re still a couple days away from the closing of the speaker submissions, at the time we’re recording this. And I know we have had a couple of workshop submissions come in. We’ll have to look at those and see whether that’s something that we want to accept. It’s definitely something we’re interested in.

Workshops can be quite interesting, and if we do those, they would likely be the same day as the contributor day. And then, it is a multi-track event. So there will be two tracks running, the entire time, for the two days of the camp. And then the contributor day on the Thursday. Of course, a chance to give back to the WordPress project. And I know one of our focuses for that, we want to focus on contributing back to the Polyglots team, on adding more language support in WordPress.

There’s very good support there for Canadian French right now, but we would love to see some of the indigenous languages added to WordPress. And if we could start that process at contributor day, that would be, I would call that a win.

[00:29:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, nice. I don’t know if you’ll know the answer to this, but it suddenly occurred to me that, in order to get into the US, for different events in the past, there’s been real challenges for people from a variety of different parts of the world, gaining admission to the country. So there’s this whole complicated visa process, and there were various people who talked about this at WordCamp Asia.

And I don’t know if you know anything about that. You know, how difficult is it to get to Canada? Let’s say there’s somebody listening to this, and they’re in a country where they know that the US has been difficult in the past, and they would love to bring their team to Canada to support this event. Do you know anything about that? Because, certainly, I know that WordCamp US, and WordCamp Asia, and Europe I would imagine, they do offer a little bit of support with that. I don’t quite know what form that takes, but I’ll just throw that out there. You may not have an answer.

[00:30:10] Shawn Hooper: In terms of how hard it’s going to be. This is our first event, I think that’s still a bit of a question. But we are seeing a lot of interest in this event from South Asia, from Africa. We’ve had a lot of outreach from outside of the Americas, from people interested in attending this event.

And with ticket sales now online, they did go on sale this week, if someone is attending, we’ll offer them a visa letter to say that they’re attending this event and, you know, they can start the process of applying with the Canadian government. And I imagine we’ll hear, shortly thereafter, how easy they’re finding this process. Whether they’re being allowed into the country or not.

[00:30:46] Nathan Wrigley: I think the visa letter was the process that I was talking about. I think that was the level of support that I was imagining had happened.

[00:30:53] Shawn Hooper: So we’ll be doing the same thing. And we’ll see what the Canadian government says. But I imagine there will be a difference between the experience that some potential attendees had entering the US and Canada, depending where they’re coming from. I know at least if you are in one of the Commonwealth countries, travel between those countries is much easier. And we’ll see how it is with other countries.

[00:31:12] Nathan Wrigley: Just a bit of a hat tip moment really, I just wonder if you want to rattle off as many of the names of the people who’ve been on the team organising this event. Now, obviously there’s the caveat that you may miss any out, we’ll apologise.

[00:31:25] Shawn Hooper: Definitely have to include Shanta Nathwani and Matt Graham, who are the two other co-leads of this event, Shanta being our lead organiser. Big thank you to Paul Byrne, Rick Radko, Kira Howe, Jamie Osler, Ernest Mugga, Alicia Leno, Aaron Lynn and Gina Burn. Those are probably the most active of our organising team. And we are also still recruiting people who want to help out on the organising team before the event. I expect that list to grow.

[00:31:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, very nice to give these people a shout out, for the hard work that they’ve done already. I think it’s all too common for people’s names not to kind of get any spotlight. But a lot of work done in the background, gratis, with no expectation of anything in return. But thank you for giving them a bit of a shout out there.

As Shawn said, the volunteers are most welcome to apply. The sponsors are most welcome to apply. The event is going to be taking place between July the 11th and the 13th this year, 2024. It’s taking place at the Infinity Convention Center in Ottawa, in the fine country of Canada.

I do wish you incredible luck. I think it’ll be really interesting to see how this country-based event goes. Because I have an intuition that something similar could take place in the country where I live, because everything has more or less shut down. So the idea of opening up a kind of UK based event, which over the years would dot itself around into different parts of the UK. It feels like we could copy that model very successfully.

So all eyes on Canada, let’s see how that goes. But Shawn Hooper, thank you so much for chatting to me about WordCamp Canada. Really appreciate it.

[00:33:05] Shawn Hooper: Thank you, Nathan. It was a pleasure being here.

On the podcast today we have Shawn Hooper.

Shawn Hooper is a key figure in the Canadian WordPress community. He’s an advocate for national and local gatherings that bring WordPress enthusiasts together.

I have to say a special thanks to Shawn for stepping in at the eleventh hour to do this podcast recording with me. He was not the guest originally lined up and I’m so pleased that he was able to join me to get this important topic some attention.

So later this year, the first ever WordCamp Canada, or WCEH for short, will be held in Ottawa. The event is deep in the planning stages. The venue is secured, the speakers have been finalised, and it’s now up to the team of volunteers, of which Shawn is one, to make the event a success.

We talk about why the Canadian community felt the need for a national event. It’s not typical to have events based upon a country, although WordCamp US is a notable exception. Shawn explains how, after Covid, the community has not got back to where it was, and how an event like this might act as a catalyst to more participation.

We get into the challenges of creating an event of this scale. From conception until now, there’s a lot of moving parts. The venue, food, transport, volunteers, sponsors, speakers, the list could go on. It all needs to be planned, tasks assigned and executed.

Shawn tells me about the geography of Canada and how the sheer size of the country makes gathering a challenge. We also touch upon how, if the event is successful, it’ll move through different locations year by year.

The team are hoping that an event such as WCEH will act as an inspiration for other locales to take up the idea of larger events, and I’m sure that many in the community will be paying close attention to how the event is executed.

If attending WordPress events, and volunteering your time, is your thing, this episode is for you.

Useful links

WordCamp Canada (WCEH) 2024 website

WordCamp Vancouver

WordCamp Montreal

WordCamp Europe

WordCamp Asia

WordCamp US

WordCamp Y’all

Polyglots

by Nathan Wrigley at March 27, 2024 03:18 PM under WordCamp Canada

HeroPress: Words to WordPress: The Uncharted Path of Syed Laden

Pull Quote: The WordPress community ... taught me the value of respect and the beauty of collaboration.

Howdy! I’m Syed Laden. You could say I wear quite a few hats nowadays: content marketer, product manager, SEO consultant, and when the need arises, a bit of a tech whisperer in the form of UX and technical writing.

The childhood trauma is long gone, but I was bullied, not accepted wherever, and constantly mistreated. Maybe I was different, maybe I was out of the league, but these avoidances helped me become a better person over time, and now I’m writing my essay for you all.

My journey is a bit of a rollercoaster, starting in the quaint alleys of literature and journalism, and taking a sharp turn into the bustling highways of the tech world. This isn’t just a tale of changing careers; it’s about transforming passion into possibility.

Being Laden is not easy and you’ll know why.

A Literary Beginning

So I was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and my family was extremely well off at the time. I had all of the perks and luxury that anyone could imagine. But it didn’t last long as I grew up. Consider your early childhood to be prosperous, followed by a period of anxiety and stress due to a shortage of funds.

I wasn’t prepared to settle down in a bad way because it was an unexpected circumstance. As a family, we had to make a lot of adjustments, and it was a true sacrifice for me as a little boy who had lost everything without even understanding how or why.

I’ve dreamed of regaining everything by working hard since I was exposed to wealth and comfort in my early years. But, isn’t it true that becoming wealthy is harder than it seems? Yes, I was clueless about what career path to take and couldn’t figure it out. 

I used to seek advice on what to do with my life from practically everyone I could. But because everyone had a unique perspective on life, no one could provide me with exact information.

Since I was struggling, my desire to become wealthy had already faded because I had come to understand that constant effort is what lifts you rather than just having a dream. At that point, I was ready to start over and didn’t even consider what fate still had in store for me.

My approach to life had become more grounded.

I majored in literature during my undergraduate studies for some reason after developing an interest in it. Because English was not my first language, I initially found it difficult to understand and communicate.

Despite being in a horrible situation with my personal life and family, I had a strong desire to learn, which helped me overcome all of the challenges. In the world of prose and poetry, I found my voice. I stepped into the world of journalism, making my mark at NewAge BD, one of Bangladesh’s leading dailies.

But life has a funny way of throwing curveballs, and mine came in the form of a tech-shaped one.

Discovering WordPress

Because I come from a literature background, I had to be creative in everything to communicate my emotions and connect with other people. My friends used to tell me that I have great vision and I can convince people very easily.

I used to write content for other people to secure my pocket money from 2018 but I had no idea how good I was at communicating or connecting with people through my words, whether vocal or written. This resulted in a great story-telling premise, which I uncovered later.

Because I had to write a lot for academic objectives, and most of the time it had to be creative, I developed a writing style that was unrivalled by others.

In 2019, someone approached me to write content for his Amazon niche websites where he asked me to make them SEO optimized and I had no idea what he was talking about. By that time, I was already introduced to WordPress and then I also started to get to know how search engines work. 

My eyes were open by then and I saw a very open field where I could be in with the additional power of my writings. However, I was still confused cause I had plans to build my career in journalism for which I had joined NewAge BD where I nurtured my love for writing and journalism.

However, I found my calling in the tech world as I saw a more vibrant opportunity. 

Since I had an immense interest in WordPress, I switched my job to a WordPress-based company who were then making plugins for WooCommerce. This was a gateway to endless possibilities. As someone who once found solace in the rhythm of words, I now saw potential in the flexibility of WordPress.

I’ll be honest, eCommerce and tech were pretty alien to me, but writing? That’s my jam. So, I took what I knew and started painting with my words in this new digital canvas. Since then I never looked back and my life was getting better than ever with the financial freedom and also the geographical freedom. 

Growing Pains and Gains

Writing articles for a newspaper and writing a technical blog are not synonymous, just as poetry and prose are not. The same applies to my Amazon niche writing. Every piece of writing has a unique format and motto. So it was difficult for me to write for WordPress because I had these internal conflicts.

All of those money articles, info articles, product articles, and so on were driving me insane because I was so focused on the quality of the content. All I wanted was to make people read my post like they were drinking fine wine.

However, I was living in a period where written content was dull and visual stuff was fascinating. Also satisfying search engines to rank better and making sure that my article was readable, sometimes my brain froze to deliver my best but I never stopped doing this even today.

There were no cheat codes or secret tutorials; just a lot of trial, and error, and learning on the fly. And WordPress? It was like unlocking a new level in a game I didn’t know I was playing. It was intuitive, and user-friendly, and suddenly, making websites didn’t seem like wizardry anymore.

Though the path was not without its thorns. My name, Syed Laden, became an unintended barrier! You wouldn’t believe what hardships I had to go through just to have my WordPress.org profile confirmed, all because of the name I was born with.

The name game is real!

But hey, challenges are just opportunities in disguise, right? Yet, these challenges only fueled my determination to prove my worth and contribute to the WordPress ecosystem.

Small Victories, Big Lessons

My time in the digital world has been defined by significant accomplishments. My goal was to make every piece of content not just readable but discoverable.

From blog posts ready for SEO that climbed the SERPs to influential writings that influenced industry titans like Gumroad and Shopify Plus, my work not only demonstrated my abilities but also promoted WordPress as a versatile and powerful platform.

I’ve had my fair share of wins and whoopsies. SEO? Nailed it. Convincing big names to rethink their pricing? Been there, done that. But the biggest takeaway? Nothing’s set in stone, and you’re only as good as your last success.

Stay humble, stay learning.

Every challenge was a lesson in disguise. I realized that the world of WordPress, much like literature, thrived on diversity and adaptability. I honed my skills in SEO, content marketing, and technical writing, all while being in the complex landscape of WordPress & Woo.

The journey has been a great teacher. The paramount lesson learned is the impermanence of success and the importance of humility and continuous learning. The WordPress community, a tapestry of diverse talents and backgrounds, taught me the value of respect and the beauty of collaboration.

Apart from everything, I made sure my voice was heard.

Looking Forward

I’m not done yet. Today, I stand at a crossroads, ready to take WordPress to new heights.

My mission is simple: to bridge the gap between tech savviness and digital expression. WordPress is for everyone, and I’m here to prove it. Whether it’s through SEO-friendly content, user-friendly guides, or community support, I’m all in.

Think of me as the WordPress ambassador, ready to welcome folks from all corners of the internet.

Leaving My Mark

At the end of the day, I’m just a guy who jumped from the world of words to the great digital unknown. And if I can make a splash on WordPress, you can, too. My journey from the serene world of literature to the electrifying world of WordPress is a narrative of transformation.

It’s a story of embracing change, facing challenges head-on, and never losing sight of your roots. In the vast digital void, I’ve found my niche, and I’m just getting started.

Whether accepted or rejected, I am and always will be, in spirit and deed, the real Laden of WordPress.

The post Words to WordPress: The Uncharted Path of Syed Laden appeared first on HeroPress.

by Syed Laden at March 27, 2024 02:28 PM

Do The Woo Community: WordPressers Sharing Their Highlights at WordCamp Asia 2024

Show Transcript

Robert:
Hi everybody. Welcome to do the Woo. I’m Robert Jacobi and we’re broadcasting from WordCamp Asia 2024. I’m happy to have as a guest Rytis from Omnisend. Just tell us a little bit about you and why Ominsend is here.

Rytis:
Yeah, so Omnisend is a marketing automation which does email SMS and web notifications for anyone who primarily sells online. So we started with traditional retail selling physical goods. So for already sometime we help those who are WooCommerce to generate more sales and to communicate with their existing customers. But we just launched our WordPress plugin, so basically any WordPress website can use Omnisend and of course those who do sell anything like LMS charity donations, some subscription payments can now benefit from Omnis.

Robert:
It’s email marketing, email retargeting.

Rytis:
Yeah, correct. You can send both bulk emails, whatever marketer or business owner things are, and as well as automation automations, of course we encourage everyone to use. So basically you set up all the triggers if someone visited your website but did not completely purchase, so did not fill in the form. For example,

Robert:
Card abandonment, huge issue always. Yeah,

Rytis:
Probably is the most famous, but let’s say in Omnisend and part of cart abandonment, we have browse abandonment as well. So even those people who did not add anything to the card, but we visited specific products or even specific block posts and specific pages on the topics, you can easily retarget those people via email, SMS or push notification we probably sent.

Robert:
It’s brilliant. And you’ve obviously had a very focused product on WooCommerce for a while. How does that work with WordPress in general then? What’s the difference between the, I guess the original WooCommerce focus now with WordPress? Probably

Rytis:
A broad answer. So Omnisend is made for e-commerce, but just definition of e-commerce is really being broad. So let’s say with any learning management system there is transactions, online transactions that are happening. So really it can be used because it’s e-commerce, charity donations when there’s another area, those are nonprofit organizations, but we still have transactions. We have to communicate with their donors and to remind them that we can donate repeatedly and send post purchase or post donation emails et ceteras like application is now absolutely unlimited and any other website can use leads to collect subscribers via form. So just sell bulk campaigns, this matter, your school, a small business, having a website, et cetera.

Robert:
No, that’s excellent. And you have attended Word Campe for it, you’re actually a sponsor for I think the first time at WordCamp Asia.

Rytis:
Yeah, correct. This is a new experience for us being a sponsor and we have sponsored quality EAPs, but the award camp, big WordCamp is first for us, so really having a booth here.

Robert:
Very nice and large booth actually.

Rytis:
Thank you.

Robert:
You guys really went top of the line for the sponsorships.

Rytis:
Kudos to the colleagues. Yeah, I know it’s of course Sponsor gives a new experience, but I really liked so far, so for any businesses, it doesn’t matter if you are a service provider or maybe an agency, et cetera, I think it’s really worth considering at least sponsoring and maybe starting with smaller booth, but being present at Work camp and even if you are not sponsoring. So for the listeners, I would really encourage to visit at least one of those three major work camps

Robert:
Global, the flagships, yeah,

Rytis:
Yeah, the flagships or the Asia or the States or Europe at least once per year. It’s really worth being there because it’s a great sense of community

Robert:
Here. The community is amazing. As usual. As we wrap this up, what’s the best way to find out more about Omnisend and connect with you?

Rytis:
Yeah, so omnisend.com. It’s the best way to find us and by the way, for VU users, we have a really great offer now. So 30% off, it’s only Google the discount code which can be used and you can find it on our website as well. And personally myself, so I love LinkedIn, probably this is the most preferred mind network and of course all good email.

Robert:
Of course, email. Thank you so much, Rytis, it’s great to have you at workcamp. Asia, thanks for joining us on do the Woo. Thanks, Robert, chao.

Ray:
Hi, I’m Ray Morey and I write the Repository weekly email newsletter for WordPress for people who are hardcore to WordPress and want to know what’s happening in the community. WordCamp Asia has been incredible. I’ve had so many just amazing conversations with people. It’s crazy how you can run into people in the hallways and just have straightaway these just in-depth conversations with people about everything and everyone is being so willing to share their experiences and advice and I’m so excited to come to another WordCamp soon.

Brian:
This is Brian Rothsztein from Uniseo based in Canada and I’ve came all the way across the world to WordCamp Asia and I have to say meeting people around here has been fantastic. If you know me, you know that I love to socialize with everybody, really get to know people, get to see what the products are, what the latest plugins are, really find out about everything that has to do with WordPress and the WordPress community. But the socialization aspect and seeing how things are run out here is just fantastic. WordCamp Asia has been a fantastic experience. I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to come to any major WordCamp or any small WordCamp even locally. Really a great experience.

Sarah:
Hi, my name is Sarah. I’m a WordPress user here at the WordCamp in Asia this year. And I have to say my favorite thing about being here is just the feeling I get being around everybody who is just so involved in what they do and it just sparks all this motivation and creativity for me that it just makes me want to jump in full force.

Ace:
I’m Ace. I’m from the Philippines and WPFusion and yeah, I love meeting new friends here in work of Asia 2024. It’s been really great so far.

Anita:
Hi, I am Anita Chen from Taiwan. So it’s my first time to attend work camp. And so what I love about this is that it’s the first time I saw a camp gathering a lot of developers and a lot of volunteers who engage in the event without asking for any payback. And I can see that in south there. And what we are here is that we try to attract more digital talent to Taiwan to show them how welcome that we want them to be here.

April:
I’m April, I’m from Florida. I work with WPpopupmaker and the highlight of this event has been the swag and networking.

Daniel:
I’m Daniel Eiser from Florida. In the US I run Code Atlantic that’s is most popular for Pop-up Maker and my favorite part of this event was the Freemius party. I met a ton of great other product authors and had a blast.

Charney:
I’m Charney and I’m from India and I am here with StellaWP. It’s an amazing brand and has eight brands under that. And I think what I enjoyed the most of being in Webcam Asia is being on my stall because it’s my first international WordCamp Asia and making these really cute buttons with the superpowers that anybody who came at the stall wanted to color. . And yeah, I think that was really amazing meeting new people. Oh my god, I have all colleagues from all over the world and we are always meeting virtually, but it was such a great opportunity and time to meet all of them in person. So I’m pretty thrilled about it and really looking forward to the next one.

Frederick:
So I’m Frederick Coleman and I’m from the US and I work for Blockonomics. I was here for WordCamp Asia last year as well. And I think the great thing about WordCamp Asia is that it’s a place where a lot of new people that you don’t see at the word camps in Europe and us get to come together, new people interact with them and being able to see some new ideas and that’s great.

Christina:
So hi, my name is Christina. I’m from Lithuania and I am from hosting and I was in WordCamp Asia this year and I loved about being together with my friends who are actually becoming my family. So just hugging all of them after seeing them was a great experience this year.

Hassan:
Hey, I’m Hassan from Bangladesh. I came here to represent rocket.net and I’m actually loving the environment here. The atmosphere is great and the people are awesome. The best moment for me was meeting our clients here who uses rocket.net. They were loving the product and they were like, I love your product. And the T-shirt design, our T-shirt like Google and the team of Google and Element Shirt, they loved our design, so it was great to showcase the product. I love, I love briefing rocket.net because it’s my product. I love this product. So yeah, it’s going great.

Horia:
Hi, I am Horia I’m from Romania and it’s been great to show our latest product Cobio AI to people here at Work Peja, it’s also great to explore this different culture and this beautiful country. Yeah, it’s been a great work camp so far.

Jack:
Hi, my name is Jack and I am here from WPFusion and my highlight was reconnecting with friends that I get to see at each WordCamp and going to Tasty restaurants with them.

Jim:
Hi Bob, I am Jim Ross. I am from the Philippines and I’m the training lead in level app. We provide support for WordPress plugin and teams. And the highlight for me for this WordCamp WC Asia 2024, of course number one, the swags and of course the talks. Yeah, I really like the topics and of course later the after party I’m looking forward for the after party. Yeah, I enjoyed last year’s after party, so I’m expecting that the after party later would be great as well.

Michelle:
Hi, I am Michelle Freschette. I am the director of community engagement for StellarWP and the executive director of Post Status and I spoke this year at WordCamp Asia about inclusion and allyship. And the highlight of the entire event is all the people that I get to see when I travel to Asia and the love that I have for all the people here. I’ve had just a wonderful time and the warm welcome reception has been amazing.

Speaker 18:
I’m Mike, I work with Automattic and I’m in the VIP division. It’s actually my first WordCamp, not only my first WordCamp Asia and probably my favorite part has been just connecting with the people and the community, although I do work for Automattic, which sort of are the creators of WordPress or involved in the creation of WordPress. Yeah, I’m not that plugged into the community, so it’s been really nice to connect with everyone while I’m here.

Anad:
This is Anad from rocket.net and I’m from Bangladesh. And the thing is I am loving work camps right now. The thing is I’ve been to work in Nepal, it was amazing and work in Asia . It has lots of people from different parts of the world with amazing people, amazing sponsors, and loving the environment here and it has been a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Olga:
I’m Olga from San Petersburg, Russia. I am full stock WordPress developer and this is my main job and I’m also contributing to WordPress core and different other teams a lot. Right now I’m calling it for test this release. I hope it’ll be well because it’s coming near and about this conference I liked most, of course panel I was taking part in about women’s in tech and I think everyone should listen to it and not only listen, but take actions and think how you can be part of this initiative and make things to the better future, not only for women, but for everyone. And this conference is awesome because we have people from almost all over the world. It’s wonderful.

Pania:
Hey, I’m part Pania from Krisha Web. I’m from India and I’m here for the first time in WordCamp Asia. We are the VIP agency partner and WordCamp Asia. I would like to thank all the organizers and the sponsors to organize an excellent WordCamp. The arrangements, the sponsors areas as well as the speaker sessions are really very good. I really enjoyed meeting people, networking especially I’m a big fan of do the the bob, the man he’s behind the success of others. I’m following really well to him. Thank you so much. All the wishes to everyone. Thank you.

Erika:
I’m Erika from Canada. I work at Woo and my favorite part of WordCamp Asia 2024 is connecting with the community and having the chance to get together in person again.

Pi:
Hello, I’m Pi and I’m a developer advocate here at Woo. And my favorite part about WordCamp Asia has been connecting with developers and eating vegan food.

The WordCamp Asia 2024 was a gathering filled with insightful conversations and networking opportunities for WordPress enthusiasts and professionals from around the world. The event featured a wide array of speakers and sponsors, offering valuable discussions and exhibitions on various WordPress-related topics and products. While attending, I was able to get some highlights from several of the attendees. Enjoy!

by BobWP at March 27, 2024 11:34 AM under Uncategorized

March 26, 2024

Matt: Gamelan Jazz

My old HSPVA friend and classmate Joe Santa Maria has a really cool album that I can only describe as if a Chris Potter big band decided to play Indonesian gamelan music, a type of trance-like rhythmic music which I originally discovered through Aaron Taylor Kuffner’s Gamelatron. You can listen or buy the album here. This is the first album I’ve bought in… forever, I’ve gotten so used to streaming. Feels kinda nice. I need to explore Bandcamp more it’s so cool.

by Matt at March 26, 2024 11:58 PM under Asides

Matt: Tom Scott on APIs

I was late to discover Tom Scott, it was only after he did his goodbye video that I came across him, but he is a Youtube treasure with an archive of a ton of good stuff. Here’s one where he ties together scraping, APIs, Web 2.0, privacy, Cliffs of Dover, and some philosophy. So beautiful.

by Matt at March 26, 2024 07:14 AM under Asides

March 23, 2024

Gutenberg Times: Dev hours on Block Hooks, building better patterns, customizing your store, a new book and more — Weekend Edition 288

Howdy,

Next week is going to be a busy week, with two releases, WordPress 6.5 and Gutenberg 18.0, a Hallway Hangout and Developer Hours.

It feels to me that WordPress 6.5, has received a lot of buzz. It’s a powerful release with lots of great new features, especially for extenders and other developers. I also love the new Data views, the drop shadows, revisions, the improvements in Drag and Drop, Listview and template screens.

I hope you are ready for this stokeful release coming to a WordPress instance near you!

Yours, 💕
Birgit

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Short release update:

WordPress 6.5 is upon us on March 26, 2024 –
WordPress 6.5 RC 3 was released this week. In last week’s edition I shared plenty of links on learning more about WordPress 6.5

The next Gutenberg plugin release is scheduled for March 27.
The Gutenberg 18.0 RC is already available for testing.

Upcoming events in the WordPress open-source space

Developer Hours: Exploring Block Hooks in WordPress 6.5 with Nick Diego and Bernie Reiter. They will discuss examples on how to use the new Block Hooks API coming to WordPress with 6.5. You’ll learn how to use it to place a block automatically before or after an existing block. For instance, a like button after the title of your blog posts, or a Back-to-Top link before the next heading in a longer piece. The Developer Hours will take place on March 26, 2024, at 14:00 UTC (9 am EDT)

Graphic with inforamtion about the Dev Hours.

Exploring WordPress 6.5 with Kathryn Presner and Wes Theron on March 26, 2024 at 21:00 UTC / 4 pm EDT. The Presenters will cover all the new features coming to blocks, List view, the Font Library and Revisions.


Hallway Hangout: Using Site editor in production for client sites with Justin Tadlock and me. On March 27 at 16:00 UTC (11 am EDT) participants will discuss in an informal setting: how agencies and freelancers adjust their workflow and tooling to provide a consistent experience for their clients.


In the event Untangling Templates on March 27 at 15:00 UTC / 10 am EDT, Kathryn Presner invites you to demystify templates together! “Diving into the Site Editor, we’ll explore the key elements that drive the look and layout of your site, clarifying the purpose of each built-in template. We’ll look at some scenarios when it makes sense to create a custom template, and get hands-on to build a couple of them live. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a better understanding of the potential of WordPress templates, and be excited to play with templates on your own site!” read the description.


Learn.WordPress and Bud Kraus will present “What’s New In WordPress 6.5?” via Zoom on Tuesday, April 9 at 19:00 UTC (2 PM EDT). He will demonstrate the new features coming to WordPress 6.5, such as Font Management Revisions for Styles and templates, and the new data view screens coming to the Site Editor.

Planned articles for the Developer Blog:

  • How to work effectively with the useSelect hook
  • A practical introduction to using WordPress React components for plugin pages
  • Block Hooks in four examples
  • Introduction to the Interactivity API

If you don’t miss any new article, subscribe to the WordPress Developer Blog

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Synched Pattern Overrides – an early review
Update March 14, 2024: In preparation for WordPress 6.6, Daniel Richards posted an overview issue on what’s next for Synced Pattern Overrides on GitHub Update March 13, 2024: During the…
Block Bindings and Custom Fields – an (almost) no-code example
This article received two updates today, March 13, 2024: Link to second part of the Introducing Block Bindings article series. Screenshot of the visual indicator for single block With the…

Eight new Editor Tips by Tammie Lister

Drop Shadow updates in WordPress 6.5 by yours truly on the WordPress Developer Blog summarizes how to use the controls for various blocks and how to remove core presets.


Fabian Kägy, Matias Ventura and Luis Herranz were guest at the Frontend Happy Hour podcast to answer the question of Why does WordPress dominate the web? and shared ‘their experiences and insights in developing and leveraging WordPress.’ An interesting listen.


In time for the Font Library to come to WordPress with 6.5, Csaba Varszegi of LittleBigThings. published his plugin to load Modern-Font Stacks as Font collection.


The Mindspun Responsive Blocks plugin was just published to WordPress plugin repository. It adds fully responsive core-like blocks and allows you to create your custom responsive blocks. They just released their Stripe-based Payment block as well.


In her post Customize Your Store, Patricia Hillebrandt explains a new way to design WooCommerce stores coming to WooCommerce 8.8. The tool aptrly named “Customize Your Store” makes it easier for you to make your shop look just the way you want. You don’t need to be a tech expert to use it. Hillebrandt shared more details about these upgrades and how you can use them to improve your online store.


Brian Coords asked in his latest post Should the “Page” in WordPress be the new default? He also wants to say Goodbye to frontpage.html. “It’s become increasingly clear that block theme developers are by and large not using it. The biggest issue, from what I can understand, is that it places content inside of a template, not inside of page content. That distinction has consequences. It’s really hard for average users to disable or even modify without understanding the intricacies of the site editor.” he wrote. What do you think?


Joeleen Kennedy, senior web engineer, wrote about three things HumanMade loved about the Harvard Gazette WordPress website. “We decided early on that we would be early adopters and went all-in on full site editing, using the Gutenberg plugin to get new features that hadn’t yet made it to WordPress core.” she wrote. Head on over the read what was and how the new site was built and in the embed video you learn how the customer’s experience was.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Beatriz Fialho, theme designer at Automattic, shared her Pattern design tips and tricks for developers on the WordPress Developer Blog. What makes a well-designed pattern? And what ensures that a pattern integrates flawlessly into any WordPress site? A designer shares some of the lessons they’ve learned while building themes and websites.

screenshot from the article

 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2024” 
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: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

In his post WordPress Theme Composition and Interoperability, Rich Tabor emphasizes the need for themes to be flexible and easily adaptable to the evolving WordPress ecosystem, ensuring that themes can work seamlessly with various page builders and extend functionality without compromising on design or user experience. “Today’s themes—or rather, today’s block themes—inherit the newest additions to WordPress out-of-the-box, as blocks carry much of the “weight” themes were once required to do. And historically, many theme designers—including myself—relied on a framework that covered the basics of their theming approach; but now, WordPress is that framework.” Tabor wrote.


Nadia Maya Ardiani, editor at Hosting blog and co-host on the Gutenberg Changelog episode 89 interviewed Maggie Cabrera, designer/developer on the Twenty-Twenty-Four theme. Here is the post: Maggie Cabrera: Turning a WordPress Passion Into a Professional Pathway. “I think there’s a shift of the people who are usually building themes. Before, theme-building was something that only developers would do, or designers who knew how to code to some extent. It’s different now. People who don’t know how to code can create block themes, too. The only thing that you need to know is how to use WordPress and the block editor,” Cabrera explains.

Maggie Cabrera will be my special guest on the next Gutenberg Changelog we will record Wednesday. If you don’t want to miss the episode, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite pod catcher. Here are a few suggestions.
Apple Podcasts | CastBox | Google Podcasts | PocketCasts |  Podbean  
Podchaser | RSS | Spotify


Congratulations to Tammie Lister and her editor, Jessica Lyschik, for publishing the new book about WordPress Styling with Blocks, Patterns, Templates, and Themes. “Guided by examples that demonstrate effortless customization entirely suited to your preferences, you’ll master the design tools, patterns, and full site editing capabilities to shape impactful websites that mirror your distinct vision and creativity.” is written on the back of the book.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

If you, like me, missed this year’s DE{CODE} event, you can watch all the sessions from WP Engine’s De{code} YouTube Playlist. Definitely on my watch list is Empower your development: the breakthrough features of WordPress 6.5 unleashed with Damon Cook, Nick Diego and Fabian Kägy, and a virtual appearance by Anne McCarthy. They cover Data views, Block Bindings, and the Interactivity API with short demos.


If you are not so firm or up-to-date with your JavaScript, Aurooba Ahmed created a free course to explain the basics of JavaScript you will need to work with Blocks in WordPress. The course is called JS Essentials for WP Devs and you can sign up here, and you receive 15 lesson via emails.

Ahmed also published an excellent mini-course on how to plan and make decision about the blocks you start to build. It’s a deeper dive into the Block editor UI philosophy and how to make your decisions on where to add options and settings, as well as how to use WordPress components to build your interfaces.

Thoughtful Block UI for WordPress – Learn to plan out your custom WordPress block for a great editing experience within the Block Editor in under an hour and at a very reasonable price.


A new update is coming to WooCommerce, which is version 8.8. Brent MacKinnon, developer experience lead at Woo, posted about Making Product Onboarding and Product Tours Extensible for product builders. This update is going to help people who are new to WooCommerce by making it easier for them to learn how to use it. Now, people who make websites can change the guides and instructions to better fit what their customers need. This makes it simpler for new users to get started and for developers to guide them through WooCommerce.


In his latest Live stream, Ryan Welcher Reviewed Gutenberg 17.8 & 17.9. He covers, among other features, grid layouts, with row and columns span, bulk export of patterns and setting alternative templates in the sidebar.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience

GitHub all releases

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.


For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com


Featured Image: AI Graphic shared by Noel Tock at WordCamp Asia


Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition?

We hate spam, too, and won’t give your email address to anyone
except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition

Thanks for subscribing.

by Birgit Pauli-Haack at March 23, 2024 01:53 AM under Weekend Edition

March 22, 2024

HeroPress: SO MUCH NEWS! Find out what’s happening with HeroPress!

A yellow cab moves quickly down a New York City street with food carts and a bank in the background.

It’s been a couple weeks since you’ve seen a HeroPress update, but that’s because it’s been BUSY around here! Check out all the news below!


HeroPress.comTell Your Own Story – 說出自己的故事

Juan Chen

Juan Chen is from Taiwan, but it was killing him. He left his homeland to travel The Camino and it saved his life. WordPress lets him tell the world about his experiences.

To let others know about my creations, I decided to join the WordPress community.

During the process of learning WordPress, I also got to know the Taiwanese community. From the community friends, I learned a lot that helped me become a better content creator!

Juan’s essay is available on HeroPress.com.


Recently I took part in a job trial at WPTavern. Rather than typical written stories, I decided to do long form stories in Video/Audio.

I did five segments over the period of a week, and the story I covered was the Global Photo Festival managed by the folks from Kerala. If you’re interested in a deep dive on the event and everything that went into it, check it out!


WPPhotos.Info

small alleyway with a man on a bicycle and sunrays

Nada, shared her story about the WPPhoto of the week:

Last Christmas when she and her husband and her visited Morocco for the first time in their lives. They spent a few nights in Marrakesh where this picture was taken.

They went out in the morning trying to look for breakfast somewhere and the shops were still closed and there were a few people on the streets going to work (like this guy on the bicycle). It was mostly cold, but the sun shone beautifully this morning.

Read more of the story at WPPhotos.info!


Press Releases!

Press It WP

PressItWP.com has been a part of the HeroPress Network for almost a year now, if you ever release Press Releases, please consider PressItWP!

Website Professionals Can Now Take Advantage of the New Bluehost Cloud

Bluehost Cloud, in partnership with Automattic, offers a first-of-its-kind WordPress platform providing users with unmatched speed and performance.

View Press Release



WP Photos

Here are some of the great photos submitted to the WPPhotos project this week!

An eerie underground passage vanishing into the depths of a cave.

CC0 licensed photo by juanincamino from the WordPress Photo Directory.

A colorful wooden boat with a high curved prow decorated with flags moored on a sandy beach with the ocean in the background on a clear day.

CC0 licensed photo by Mahfuzul Hasan from the WordPress Photo Directory.

Close-up of dew drops on a plant with green and purple stems covered in fine hairs.

CC0 licensed photo by creativemz from the WordPress Photo Directory.

Orang-utan in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo

CC0 licensed photo by Tess Needham from the WordPress Photo Directory.

A traditional vacant carousel with ornately decorated horses and a lit canopy with a sign indicating the entrance at the Please Touch Museum (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

CC0 licensed photo by Jeffrey Paul from the WordPress Photo Directory.

Close-up of a Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) flower. Pink petals, red pistil against a dark background.

CC0 licensed photo by werkform from the WordPress Photo Directory.

Be sure to check out the hundreds of other great photos!

The post SO MUCH NEWS! Find out what’s happening with HeroPress! appeared first on HeroPress.

March 22, 2024 07:24 PM under Newsletter

March 21, 2024

Akismet: Version 5.3.2 of the Akismet WordPress plugin is now available

Version 5.3.2 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now ready for download.

In this release, we’ve improved the experience for new users. We now show what kind of information you can expect once Akismet has started to prevent spam on your site.

There are also a number of bug fixes and improvements and we recommend upgrading if you’re using an earlier version of the plugin.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

by Chris Rosser 🏔 at March 21, 2024 01:48 AM under Releases

March 20, 2024

WPTavern: #112 – Miriam Schwab on Balancing WordPress Success and Family Life

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, balancing WordPress success and family life.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can copy that URL in to most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Head over to WP Tavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Miriam Schwab.

Miriam co-founded Strattic to enable WordPress websites to be more secure and performance. After Elementor or acquired Strattic, Miriam continued leading the unit before becoming head of WordPress relations. Previously Miriam founded and managed a WordPress development agency in Israel. With over 15 years of experience, she’s a respected member of the WordPress community and a renowned speaker.

In today’s episode we discuss Miriam’s life. It’s a departure for this podcast, which usually focuses upon the code, the plugins, and the community.

The idea came out of a talk which Miriam presented at WordCamp Asia this year. In this talk, Miriam outlined how she carved out a successful career in the world of WordPress whilst also being the mother of seven children. And it’s fascinating.

She openly shares her story as a way of empowering others in the WordPress space. Her journey goes from content writer to startup founder, and ultimately to the important role she now has at Elementor. The episode paints a picture of Miriam’s drive, perseverance and adaptability.

We talk about the shifts in Miriam’s career from the decision to sell Strattic, to the challenges she faced when transitioning to a more structured environment at Elementor. Her experiences underscore the importance of finding one’s footing amidst rapid organizational growth. Something Elementor continues to experience, even in the face of emerging tools like Gutenberg.

We also talk about the fabric of the WordPress community. A fundamental aspect of Miriam’s professional life. The generosity and collaborative spirit of fellow WordPress enthusiastic have been crucial to her success, leading to lifelong friendships and a supportive network that thrives even amidst competition.

We also get into how Miriam manages to maintain her productivity, and talk about the specific tool she has adopted such as Jira, Text Expander and Notion. How she uses them and why she likes them.

This episode is a fantastic discussion, with a tenacious person who was not just found balance, but has also flourished.

If you’re interested in hearing how one person has managed the stresses and strains of an incredibly busy life, this episode is for you.

If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast. Where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

A quick note, before we begin. This was recorded live at WordCamp Asia. There was quite a lot of background noise to contend with, and I’ve done my best to make the audio as easy to listen to as possible.

And so without further delay, I bring you Miriam Schwab.

I am joined on the podcast today by Miriam Schwab. Hello.

[00:04:10] Miriam Schwab: Hello.

[00:04:11] Nathan Wrigley: Very nice to have you with us. We’re going to talk today about, well, something entirely different. We’re going to talk about you, and your actual life. We might get into WordPress a bit. But you did a talk at WordCamp Asia, which is where we are at the moment, and it was about your life, and how busy you are, and the ways that you cope, and all of that. Will you just tell us a little bit about the presentation that you gave this morning?

[00:04:35] Miriam Schwab: This was an unusual talk for me to give, because mostly my talks are pretty practical and technical, and I actually tried to stay away from talking about my private life. Makes me a bit uncomfortable, and I’m not sure how much people want to know. And also, you know, it’s sharing private aspects that I’m just not used to sharing so much.

But I submitted this talk, and I actually had forgotten that I submitted this topic, until they wrote to me and they’re like, your talk has been accepted. How I built my WordPress career while raising seven children. I was like, oh my gosh, I actually submitted that. Because it was like, there’s some time gap between it.

The reason I submitted it is because, for a while, people have been saying to me that I should share my story because it’s unique, slash weird. And I thought, okay, you know what, maybe it’s time. And also, my hope was that the talk would be helpful to people, and so I spoke about that.

[00:05:21] Nathan Wrigley: So tell us a little bit about your life. What makes your life so, well, complicated? You are going to have to get into the family, and all sorts, aren’t you? So hopefully you’re comfortable covering that.

But you’ve got an incredibly busy life. A very large family. We can get into that a little bit. You’ve got a very busy career. In fact, you’ve had many different hats that you’ve worn over the years. Let’s just start with the family. You’ve got seven children? And I imagine for most people, just the idea of one or two children is probably about as much as they can cope with. Seven, I’m guessing it kept you very, very busy. Are they all grown up now?

[00:05:56] Miriam Schwab: So my oldest is 25, and my youngest is 11. And then, you know, all sorts of ranges of ages in between. So I don’t have babies anymore. It’s a different stage. But at every stage it’s like a different type of need. It gets easier, at least it gets less physically demanding in terms of, now I mostly can sleep. That’s exciting. You know, I’m not changing diapers, and like I don’t have to bathe my kids, and all that kind of stuff. And they can pretty often make their own food, and so a lot of that has been reduced. Or even do their own laundries. How awesome is that.

My two oldest actually just got engaged. Dealing with all of that, and that’s a whole thing. It’s two productions, two events, two new families to be connected with, you know? And thank god, I’m very happy about it. So everything has its, every stage has its thing.

[00:06:34] Nathan Wrigley: It paints a picture, like I said, if you know anything about raising a family, you’ll have an intuition that seven will keep you incredibly busy. But obviously that’s just one component of your life. You’ve had a really, really interesting career path, through the WordPress space. So just tell us about the different projects that you’ve launched, because I think, if you tell us about Strattic, and all of the different projects, we’ll get another idea of the difficulty, if you like, and how busy you’ve been.

[00:07:01] Miriam Schwab: I got into the WordPress space about 17 years ago, when I was looking for more flexibility in my work life. And I, at the time, had four kids. I had three kids, and then when my fourth was born, I quit my job that I was working at the time, because I needed to be able to be with my kids, and be there for my kids, without feeling bad about not being at work, or in an office or something.

And at first I wrote content and copy, but it was for companies that were putting it on websites. And then I realised the website aspects of it interested me much more. And I started exploring that, and I decided open source spoke to me more, and I checked out three main options at the time, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, and I really loved WordPress.

And so I started offering it as a service. First, you know, just me. And at the time it wasn’t really a CMS yet, so it was like blogs for companies that wanted to start having blogs, because that was like a big thing. And then that eventually, with time, grew into an agency. And we were building full custom web solutions for companies, and large nonprofits, and organisations.

Yeah, so WordPress enabled me to continue to develop myself professionally, learn a lot. Because, you know, when you’re building a WordPress business, you’re learning, not just WordPress, you’re learning about hosting, server management, security, and also business, everything around that. Sales, marketing, accounting, cashflow management, like whatever, all that stuff, billing contracts. And I loved learning all of that.

But I was able to do it kind of on my own terms, so that I could have that flexibility for my kids. So that was company number one. Then after doing that for like 13 years, I came up with the idea for Strattic. After 13 years working with WordPress, I knew the benefits of WordPress, which are many.

But also, the industry was kind of suffering from issues around security, scalability, performance. And I encountered this new trend, static site generation. And I was like, oh my gosh, if we can generate WordPress sites as static sites, you get all the benefits of WordPress, and the powerful CMS. And sites that are fully scalable, you know, highly secure because there’s no tech surface, and just really fast.

So I started working on Strattic, building out the product, sold my agency. And yeah, and then Strattic was a whole new journey, and it was a venture backed startup, raising funding, and the whole thing. And did that until it was acquired by Elementor in June of 2022, and that’s where I’ve been since then. So that’s quite a few.

[00:09:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, there’s lot in there, isn’t there? But so, we’ve got the family life, which is very, very, busy. You’ve got the work life, which is very, very busy. Do you feel that you got into it at just the right time? Was it kind of like the perfect thing, WordPress at that moment? Because you could, I’m going to guess there was a bit of late evening work, and that kind of thing. Where you could fit your family life around all the different moving parts of the business. Did WordPress and, you know, building websites, and building up that agency, was there some overlap there with family, and the kind of remote, if you like, distributed sort of nature of the work that you could do?

[00:09:40] Miriam Schwab: It really supported my family life. I don’t mean economically, but that as well. But now there’s more remote options. But in those days, remote work wasn’t really a thing so much. Maybe Automattic was already doing it, I’m not sure, but nobody else. So it wasn’t an option. You either worked in an office, or you didn’t work, more or less. And so embarking on a journey with WordPress meant that I could work when it was good for me.

It’s not like I didn’t work because of this, it just meant that I could work at night, or early morning or, you know, whatever, off times, and catch up with things. Because instead of having to be pressured to work in a certain window of hours, and that just worked. That worked really well for me.

I think, also in the other direction, I got into WordPress at a good time, because I started learning it before it became a CMS, so I was already there. And I already like was creating reputation as a WordPress person. And then when it became CMS, and companies started to turn around and go, wait, our proprietary CMS is, we can’t do anything with them, they’re too limiting, cost a fortune. They start to look to move to WordPress, and I was well positioned for that. So that was also good timing.

[00:10:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s nice. Did you find that the community, the people in the WordPress space, were they a crutch that you could rely on? I mean, we always talk about the WordPress community, and I know for a fact that you are deeply embedded in the community. So I’m anticipating the answer here.

But let’s imagine that you’d have done a similar business, but not with open source, with some, I don’t know, corporate kind of thing. I get the feeling life would’ve been a little bit harder. I’m getting the feeling that the community may have helped you, but I’m not trying to put words into your mouth, but just talk about that.

[00:11:09] Miriam Schwab: So in the earlier years of being part of the WordPress community, I really enjoyed being in touch with people online. And the way I benefitted was that WordPress has a strong culture of sharing. Sharing knowledge, sharing learnings, which I was inspired by. And as I started learning about WordPress, I actually started a blog at the time, and I would just write posts about everything I learned, which also helped other people. So it was kind of like paying it forward. I benefitted a lot from that.

I only was able to meet up with people face-to-face, for the first time, at the first WordCamp Europe. It worked out for me to go, and it was life changing, I think, in some ways, which is funny to say. It wasn’t the size of the conferences now. It was, I think a couple hundred people, and it was in Leiden in the Netherlands.

But I got to meet people that I’d been in touch with online, but for real, and there’s something about that connection that’s different. Then I really became close to people in the community. And it’s just, being part of an industry that’s friendly, to me was really important. Well, I didn’t know that, but now I see. It’s really nice. People are supportive, and friendly and like, yeah, we might compete with each other, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.

I loved introducing, for example, the co-founder, CTO of Elementor to Robbie from Beaver Builder. They had never met, and they were both thrilled to meet each other. And they’re page builders that compete with each other, but that’s okay. This just suits my nature more than being in a, like a cold, corporate type of environment. That wouldn’t work for me.

[00:12:24] Nathan Wrigley: You just used the word close when you were talking about these people, these colleagues, these people in the community. Do you have actual friendships based upon the software? You know, you’ve been to these events and, do you consider them to be your actual friends?

[00:12:37] Miriam Schwab: So there are some people that I would definitely consider to be my friends, I’m in touch with on an ongoing basis. And, yeah, definitely my friends. And then there’s a lot of people who, you know, we’re in touch a little bit, but then when we see each other it’s like, you know, we never stopped being in touch. So if we meet up at WordCamps, then it’s just like picking up again. And it’s a different kind of friendship, but I also consider them my friends. I just really love the people in the community, they’re so nice.

[00:12:57] Nathan Wrigley: You always seem to be very positive. Very effervescent. There’s always a very nice energy coming from you. But I’m guessing that, given everything that we’ve talked about, you know, beginning an agency, starting a new company, learning all of that with the family in the background all the while. I’m guessing it’s not always been easy. I’m guessing that maybe there’s moments where it wasn’t quite so rosy. Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us some of the struggles over the last decade.

[00:13:20] Miriam Schwab: So i’ve definitely had struggles, definitely. Running businesses is hard and stressful. There’s certain things that have kept me going. So first of all, I think almost any founder has to be somewhat unrealistically optimistic. I think you just always have to be like, well, that’s going to work out. I don’t know, there’s something about it. Otherwise you can’t keep going. So I’m just generally optimistic.

Also I think I’ve learned through the years, okay, so that’s not going to work. But like, figuring out ways to circumvent an issue, or take a different path. Which to me is also like interesting and exciting, because then you get to like rethink things. So that’s one thing, I’m realistically optimistic.

And the other thing that has kept me going is working with really great people. So I’ve been fortunate, in the agency and at Strattic, working with people. I can’t say when people say that employees or team is a family, it’s not. It’s not, because in the end it’s a business. But we became really close at Strattic, and we really care about each other. We make each other laugh a lot. Like, they’re hilarious people. It’s almost like we’re competing to see who can make each other laugh more.

And even since we’ve been acquired by Elementor, and the team is doing, not always the same things anymore, we still will meet up for lunch together, and things like that. So working with good people. My family, my parents, you know, my siblings have always been very supportive. So that means a lot when I’m going through hard times. And then my own personal community. I live in a really nice community, and so I’m there for people when they need it, and people are here for me when I need it. And so it’s about having, just really good people around you.

[00:14:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:14:39] Miriam Schwab: I think that helps. And sometimes I just literally just pray. I’m like, oh my gosh, what’s going to be? All right, time to pray. I know that’s not going to, a lot of people aren’t going to really be able to relate to that. But I do think that a lot of things are out of our hands. Like, we can work really hard, and we can try really hard, and then in the end, things go one way or another, and that’s out of our control. So that’s where I pray.

[00:14:56] Nathan Wrigley: I wrote down a question, which I think is an interesting one. And it was about just the capacity to cope. And everything that you’ve described, I don’t think I could have lived through what you’ve been through, and come out the other side successfully. I think it would’ve been a bit of a disaster. I’m imagining all the plates spinning, and probably most of them shattered on the floor. Do you think that there’s just something about you, your nature, if you like, or the way you were raised or whatever, that allows you to cope?

Because there must have been times where everything was happening all at once. And, you know, I’ve got no time for me. Where’s Miriam time? Do you think about yourself in that way? You said you are optimistic, but it must go a little bit further than that.

[00:15:36] Miriam Schwab: The way I describe my, these two aspects of my life, the career, and the personal, in my talk now, is I took both to the extremes. I did. Seven kids and two businesses. I don’t know why I am like that, I need to be living at the edge. And I’ve told my kids this because they can’t believe it, but before I got married and started having kids, my nature is actually lazy. That doesn’t seem like it aligns with where I am today.

But my nature is lazy, and I think I always felt like I needed to push myself more to not be lazy. So like to make sure that I didn’t have a chance to just do something unproductive. When you have kids, and work, and all that stuff, you don’t have time.

But I always made time for myself, when I felt like I needed. If I felt like things were be coming too much, I would say no. I would take a break. At a few points, I did something which now people call like a workcation, where I would go to Tel Aviv, stay in a hotel on the beach for like a day or two, work there, maybe not as intensely, and go to sit by the sea. So just to recharge when I felt it.

So I was able to identify when I was going too far. I will give credit to my family, in that I come from a, I’m probably the first generation in a long time, that is properly working as a woman. You know, my mother, my aunts, they were stay at-home moms, which is important. But, you know, they didn’t have professions outside the home. But I come from a family of very opinionated, strong women, including my grandmother, both my grandmothers actually. Very strong, have gone through a lot, always keep a good attitude, always loving and, I must be inspired by them.

[00:16:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I mean, from everything that we’ve talked about already, and we’ll get into how you actually managed it, on a sort of nitty gritty way. It does seem like you’ve coped incredibly well. How do you manage the actual tasks? So if we were to look at your typical day, what are you doing? How are you making sure that everything gets done? I mean, do you have like this giant to-do list? Do you have tools that you use? Do you have people that you rely on? Are you good at delegating? We could go off in any direction.

[00:17:18] Miriam Schwab: So I’ve had to learn over the years, first of all, to try to focus mainly on the things that I love to do, because then I’ll really do them well. And if there’s things that I don’t love to do, then I’m either just not going to do them, or I won’t do them well. So really try to focus on that.

[00:17:31] Nathan Wrigley: Are you fairly brutal with that then? If you’ve got an intuition that you would enjoy something, and then you didn’t enjoy it, even if you’d put lots of time into it, you just drop it.

[00:17:38] Miriam Schwab: It depends how critical it is. But if I don’t feel like it’s critical enough, I will drop it. It’s not a good thing. It’s not necessarily good. Like I should have more self-discipline. But that’s how it will be. If it’s not like motivating me enough, or enjoyable enough, then I might not do it, or I’ll try to hand it off to someone else. I also, I use Jira for all my tasks.

[00:17:55] Nathan Wrigley: I’ve never used it. So you’re going to have to tell me a little bit about what that is. It’s software.

[00:17:59] Miriam Schwab: Yeah, software. I used to try to manage my tasks in different ways, but it’s especially good for what I do now at Elememtor, because I use it actually for documenting what went into like a project or a task. So all links to docs, and other tickets, whatever, it’s all in there. And I love that I can do that in one place.

It has a status, like where it’s up to, and if it’s completed, and that really helps me. One of the things that really helps me with also, is I can track what I actually completed. I do a lot of very diverse things, and so I can often get to the end of a day or a week and be like, what did I do? But with Jira in the background, and I make sure to keep it updated for small things and big things, that I can be like, oh right, I did that. I connected this person with that person, I made sure that this project went forward, I, whatever. So that’s something.

And I use some tools that help with automating things, or like making things more efficient. I hate wasting time on things. If there’s something that I can make faster, it has to be faster. If it can’t be faster, again, I might not do it, or like not do it well.

So I use some tools, like I use this tool called Text Expander, where you can just type of shortcut, and then it can expand anywhere in your, like whatever you’re doing, your email, a doc, a form, it just submits everything.

[00:19:03] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, so you write a thing once, let’s say it’s an email or something, and then you get like a short code or something?

[00:19:07] Miriam Schwab: Yeah, it could be like a sales email, for example. The short code could be like, good sales email, or something like that, and just write that, and then boom, it’s all there. I use it a lot for submitting talks. So like I’ll have a short bio shortcut, and a long bio shortcut, and I have my email address, my phone number, just things that don’t take that long to do, but it’s just annoying to do over and over. I just use shortcuts for everything, so I love that.

I started using a tool for managing my personal contacts, called Dex, like Rolodex, Dex. It’s like the tool I’ve been looking for all these years. I do a lot of relationship building, and I meet a lot of people, especially over like 17 years in an industry. It’s hard to remember. When did I meet the person? What did we talk about? What’s their areas of interest? And it syncs up with LinkedIn and Twitter, and you can create custom fields. Anyways, I love it. So I keep that updated.

[00:19:51] Nathan Wrigley: So at the end of a day like today, when you are in a conference, will you go back to your hotel and write down who you’ve spoken to, and what you spoke to them about?

[00:19:58] Miriam Schwab: So I’ll take notes so that I don’t forget, like I’ll just write something quickly, let’s say in Google Keep. And then when I get back, I’ll probably organise everything then, because I’m usually too tired. But yeah, I’ll update it.

It’s such a great tool that enables me to do that. I wasn’t good about it, because I didn’t know where to put everything. Like, what am I doing? I’m writing like a note, and how am I going to find the note later? But now it’s all associated. It also shows me all meetings I’ve ever had with a person, and emails sent to them. It’s all like synced up. When was the last time I was in touch with them? Super useful. Oh my gosh, I’m in love with that.

[00:20:25] Nathan Wrigley: So any other tools, just before we round that one off?

[00:20:28] Miriam Schwab: I use Notion Calendar. It was a different calendar, but they just bought it. But what I like about it is that, it adds something to your toolbar, at the top of your laptop screen, where you can easily see upcoming meetings. And also right before meetings, it’ll pop up with the link directly to the Google Meet or the Zoom.

So you don’t have to like, keep going back to the calendar going, when’s my next meeting? Oh, it’s in a half an hour. Wait, where’s my next meeting? And then, find the link there. It’s all right there.

[00:20:48] Nathan Wrigley: You’ve got your family, you’ve had an agency, you’ve had the product, the server software if you like. Strattic that you built, and then sold, and you’re now working with Elementor. Is there anything that you would do differently if you could replay the last 15 years?

[00:21:02] Miriam Schwab: Yeah. When the kids were younger, I should’ve probably had more help in the house, to help me give them more emotional attention, because I was doing everything for various reasons, pretty much. I was like a technical mother, so I would make sure that the food was cooked, and the dishes were washed, and the laundry was done, and like everyone got up, and appointments. But less emotional bandwidth, after all of that. And that I think is a shame. That’s something that I would’ve done differently.

[00:21:25] Nathan Wrigley: Just spent more, I’m doing air quotes, quality time.

[00:21:28] Miriam Schwab: Yeah, more quality time. More like thorough conversations with them. Some of them, some know how to demand attention, and then they get it. But the ones who are quieter and like, oh, I’m not going to bother, whatever, like easy going, they also need that attention, and they don’t necessarily get it, because they’re not as loud and demanding.

[00:21:44] Nathan Wrigley: That’s a minor regret in a way. But do you think, if you did replay your life, and you were that different person, do you think you would’ve achieved what you did achieve? Or, do you think it was a necessary sacrifice? I’m going to use that word. Did you need to be that kind of driven person that was, like you said, getting everybody up, cooking the food, and all of that, but not having the time to do, again, air quotes, quality time?

[00:22:05] Miriam Schwab: Maybe it would’ve impacted my future professional success. I would’ve liked to have been able to do both. But actually I did talk about that this morning, which is that, you know, we’re all trying our best, to do our best, right? It’s not like I wanted to do something poorly, or less efficiently. So I did my best under circumstances. And it’s not ideal, but it’s also not worth feeling guilty about. It is what it is.

And thank god my kids, they’re great. Like, they’re very independent for good and for bad, right? Like, seven kids you end up starting to make your own food like at some point, maybe earlier than other families, and things like that. And even helping me with the younger kids, so like older kids would help me with younger kids.

But they’re independent and strong. You know, we all grew up with, our parents are humans, which means that they’re flawed, so I’m flawed as well. I don’t normally regret things, it’s just something that I would’ve wanted to improve.

[00:22:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. If you look back over the same period of time, all of these different things that you’ve done, what’s been some of the highlights? What have been the bits that have made you most happy? So I’m concentrating on the work side of things. I’m sure that the family side of that would, you know, bound to be fabulous things that you did with your family. But on the work side, what’s given you the most pleasure looking back? The most satisfaction.

[00:23:08] Miriam Schwab: So I don’t remember specifically which projects it is, but in my agency, when we would sign on like a really cool company, and then work with them and build them something successfully, that always made me so happy. That felt like a big win. Working with a cool brand, or building a particularly interesting site. That’s what kept me going all those years building sites, because it was always different. Like, it wasn’t cookie cutter. Every company had different needs and different goals.

We also worked with some really amazing nonprofits. Not only in Israel, outside of Israel as well. That’s always inspiring, because you feel like you’re like a partner in their efforts. So that always kept me going. And then with Strattic, every time someone validated it, that was super exciting for me. So it started off with getting accepted to startup accelerators. Smart people being like, oh, that’s really cool, we think there’s something there.

And, you know, getting investors, and our CTO at Strattic was one of the co-creators of the PHP programming language. And getting him on board with the vision, and he was one of our early investors, then he joined full-time as CTO, and he’s a great guy. These kinds of wins, they were super exciting, and seeing people using Strattic, and having success with it, and loving it, yeah, that was all really exciting.

[00:24:08] Nathan Wrigley: Why did you sell Strattic? Were you tired of managing it? You just wanted to let go of something there. What was the reasoning behind it?

[00:24:14] Miriam Schwab: The timing was right, for many reasons. And I knew Elementor for a long time. I knew the founders because I used to organise the WordCamps in Israel. And they were like sponsors, and they were early, early days. I have pictures of them standing at like a very plain table, with some cards, and that was Elementor in the early days.

It’s great to see because now we have this ginormous booth here, you know. And I felt like this is a good home for us also, from that perspective. Thank god, I think it was right.

[00:24:40] Nathan Wrigley: Did it live on? Does it live on?

[00:24:42] Miriam Schwab: It’s still there. It’s still under the Strattic brand. That might change soon, where it becomes something like Elementor Static Hosting. I think that would be a good move for it. But yeah, we have happy customers, people signing on and gaining from the value of it, which is really great to see.

[00:24:56] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds like everything that you did prior to Elementor, you probably were leading whatever it was. You know, you were leading the agency, you were leading the development of Strattic. I’m guessing that you are not leading all of Elementor, so that means that you must now be, you’ve got a boss. How’s that? How’s that shift in, okay I’m being told what to do now? As opposed to me inventing all the things that I need to do.

[00:25:18] Miriam Schwab: It was really hard in the beginning, really hard. I hadn’t been an employee for, well, I stopped being employed when my fourth kid was born, and she’s 19 now. Okay, so it was like, I don’t know, 17, 18 years. And what was hard for me, was not that I was being told what to do, I think Yoni and Ariel, knowing me, they knew that, can’t really tell Miriam what to do. That won’t go over well. And they weren’t interested in telling you what to do, but they’re the founders.

But it was that I didn’t know what was flying. I always knew exactly what was happening in my companies. I knew what was coming up next. I knew how to get things done. I knew who to be in touch with. And then things just became really, there’s like a lot of friction in Elementor for me, because I didn’t understand how the organisation worked. If I needed something done, or if I needed to do something, or if I needed to buy a tool, or I don’t know what, I didn’t know who to talk to. And I didn’t know how to get it to happen. And it was really frustrating for me.

And when I was in the beginning, I was still leading Strattic, and that was incredibly frustrating because, also, I didn’t know how to get things done. If I know something needs to be done, I like to just do it. And then I felt like I was dealing with way more bureaucracy, it was really frustrating. I didn’t know if I was going to stick around because of that. Not because of them, just I was like, I can’t be an employee. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I just need to learn how to be an employee. That’s a new skillset, which I love learning new skill sets, and having new experiences.

So when I shifted my mindset to, okay, instead of trying to fight the system, why don’t I learn to work within the system? And then I took on the role of head of WordPress relations. So I literally, I learned how the system works, and now I find that I have capabilities to do way more than I did at Strattic. Which is interesting, because there’s more internal resources. So like there’s design teams, there’s video teams, you know, different types of teams like that. And I can use their services for different projects, or initiatives that I’m working on.

And I also learned that at Elementor, if I have an idea, I can bring it up, and pretty often, or almost all the time, or all the time, I’m trying to think if they ever said no, they’ll be like, okay, go for it. And I can just do it, which is amazing. And I don’t have to stay in my lane. That was something else that I learned. So like, if I see something happening in a different team, that I think can be improved, I can be like, can I help you improve this? And they’ll be like, okay. And then I can help. Because one thing that’s hard for me is to see things that I think are being done in a way that that I don’t think they should be done.

[00:27:24] Nathan Wrigley: Not optimal.

[00:27:25] Miriam Schwab: No. And it frustrates me like crazy. So at Strattic, I would fix that. But I can fix that too at Elementor, because people are open to it, and so it got better. And I’m having a pretty good time. Also, my boss is basically the CEO, so I don’t have, there’s no middle management, and I just report to him. And he’s not like a micromanager at all.

[00:27:41] Nathan Wrigley: What did you say the role was called again?

[00:27:43] Miriam Schwab: Head of WordPress relations.

[00:27:44] Nathan Wrigley: What does that mean?

[00:27:45] Miriam Schwab: Yeah, it’s a funny title and role, but Elementor is a WordPress based company, and our relationship with WordPress really matters. Like we need to be good, contributing citizens in the WordPress space, and be community members, and all that. And also, around Elementor are, first of all, a lot of Elementor add-ons. You know, we need to make sure that things are going well with them, and have good communication with them. And also other plugins, that aren’t necessarily Elementor specific, but we have big overlap with their user base.

Which is a lot, because Elementor’s user base is so huge. We passed the 16 million active install mark. It’s like 20% of all WordPress sites, and like almost 10% of all sites, something like that. Like it’s mind boggling numbers. So there’s going to be overlap with other WordPress tools. Their users are going to be using Elementor. And we want to make sure that our users are having a great experience. So now we have good open lines of communication with these companies. There’s a face that they are familiar with, that they can turn to, which is me. And try to improve our communication overall, with external parties.

[00:28:49] Nathan Wrigley: That role, were you the first person to fill it at Elementor? So was that role created for you? You are nodding. So that’s a yes, thank you.

[00:28:57] Miriam Schwab: The answer is yes.

[00:28:58] Nathan Wrigley: And why was that role created? Was there a sense that you needed to contribute more into the community? What was going on there?

[00:29:07] Miriam Schwab: I think that Elementor’s management wanted someone in this role for a while. But it’s not a typical role, where you have a job description. Because I’ve been in this space for so long, and I know WordPress in and out. I’ve built an agency and products. I am very well connected, and I’m passionate about WordPress. I’m a WordPress person, not an Elementor person. Now I’m an Elementor person as well, but like my passion is WordPress, and the project, and its future, and the community. And all of that comes together to form this position and, you know, there’s not, I don’t know how many people there are that could fit that role.

[00:29:41] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds like the perfect role. Has it turned out that way?

[00:29:44] Miriam Schwab: Yeah. When I first took it on, so many people’s response was like, oh my goodness, this is like the perfect role for you. It’s totally the perfect role for me, because I’m passionate about all of that, about WordPress, and open source, and the community.

And like I mentioned, I’ll do that better, because I care. I get to build relationships, which I love meeting people, and connecting with people. And so that’s part of my job, which is really fun. And I get to be creative in different ways, and bring initiatives. And it’s like all of the good parts of being a CEO, without the stress. So yeah, it’s really great for me.

[00:30:15] Nathan Wrigley: Does Elementor continue to grow? I mean, I’ve been following the progress of Elementor since right at the beginning. And I remember it coming out, and there was this free version, which gave away so much. And then, you know, pro came along, and what have you. But it was meteoric rise. I think unlike any, maybe there’s been one or two things in the WordPress space that have had that kind of level of rise, but it really did go gangbusters for years and years and years.

How has Gutenberg affected usage? You talked about Beaver Builder and introducing them to, you know, some of your people and what have you. Does Gutenberg seem like a sort of threat to you, or is it, we can all live, the there’s space for everybody, it’s fine?

[00:30:55] Miriam Schwab: So first of all, with regards to Elementor’s meteoric rise, I mean, I saw it from the side, because I was, you know, I knew them, and I was friends with them. We were both in the Israeli WordPress community and, I mean, it was crazy. In their first year of activities, they had a hundred thousand installs. And then by the second year, a million. How insane is that? They brought a product to market that solved a huge pain point, in a really good way, and continues to do so.

Elementor continues to grow, and any WordPress growth, or at least lack of negative growth. Some of, by certain people, has been attributed to Elementor actually, bringing fresh websites into the space. Which is amazing. I’m so happy to be part of a company like that, because every new website in the WordPress space is a new potential business for all of these tools, that are here at this conference. It means that they might, you know, they’re going to need hosting. They might not use Elementor hosting, and they’ll choose someone else. They’re going to need an SEO plugin, they’re going to need maybe security, translation, whatever. That’s good for everyone.

It’s continuing to grow. Like I said, we just past the 16 million mark, and we reached 15 million not that long ago. I think it’s, it’s not even half a year, I’m not sure. So Elementor is continuing to grow, thank god. And hopefully it’ll continue to grow, at a good pace.

I think Gutenberg is a promising project for WordPress. I think it was the right move to make it a priority, because continuing with the old WYSIWYG editor, I think would not ensure a good future for WordPress.

It needed to be modernised, and made more user friendly. So far, I wouldn’t see it as a threat exactly. I try to talk to people about their Gutenberg experience, to understand its benefits versus Elementor, but yeah, it’s just another option, and it’s good that it’s there. And actually many users use both. They’ll use Gutenberg for part of the site, and Elementor for part of the site. And that’s great. Like, everyone should use what works for them.

[00:32:38] Nathan Wrigley: I feel like the phrase is, a rising tide carries all boats. Something like that. If Elementor provides a way in for WordPress, exactly as you said, you know, they’re still going to need hosting, they’re going to need an SEO plugin. And if Elementor grows, and I think you’re right, I think you can attribute significant proportion of WordPress’s growth, over the last eight, nine years or whatever it has been, to page builders, and Elementor kind of leading the charge there. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Okay, well, hopefully you’ll be around with Elementor for the foreseeable future, and it’ll maintain, its position. 16 million sites. That’s, yeah, really impressive.

Miriam, tell us where we can find you. I’m sure people listening to this, maybe they’ve been interested by the Elementor bit, or maybe they’ve been interested in listening about your life, and how you’ve managed all of that. Where can we find you?

[00:33:25] Miriam Schwab: So I’m on Twitter at Miriam Schwab, S-C-H-W-A-B. You can email me, miriam@elementor.com. I’m also on Facebook, I’m also on LinkedIn, all the places. I’m not on TikTok.

[00:33:36] Nathan Wrigley: Not on TikTok, okay.

[00:33:36] Miriam Schwab: Don’t find me there.

[00:33:37] Nathan Wrigley: We’ll not be finding you on TikTok. But thank you Miriam Schwab, for chatting to me today, all about your life.

[00:33:42] Miriam Schwab: Thank you. Thanks for talking to me about it.

On the podcast today we have Miriam Schwab.

Miriam co-founded Strattic to enable WordPress websites to be more secure and performant. After Elementor acquired Strattic, Miriam continued leading the unit before becoming Head of WordPress Relations. Previously, Miriam founded and managed a WordPress development agency in Israel. With over 15 years of experience, she’s a respected member of the WordPress community and a renowned speaker.

In today’s episode we discuss Miriam’s life. It’s a departure for this podcast which usually focuses upon the code, the plugins and the community. The idea came out of a talk which Miriam presented at WordCamp Asia this year. In this talk Miriam outlined how she carved out a successful career in the world of WordPress whilst also being the mother of seven children, and it’s fascinating.

She openly shares her story as a way of empowering others in the WordPress space. Her journey goes from content writer to the start up founder, and ultimately to the important role she now has at Elementor. The episode paints a picture of Miriam’s drive, perseverance and adaptability.

We talk about the shifts in Miriam’s career, from the decision to sell Strattic, to the challenges she faced when transitioning to a more structured environment at Elementor. Her experiences underscore the importance of finding one’s footing amidst rapid organisational growth, something Elementor continues to experience, even in the face of emerging tools like Gutenberg.

We also talk about the fabric of the WordPress community, a fundamental aspect of Miriam’s professional life. The generosity and collaborative spirit of fellow WordPress enthusiasts have been crucial to her success, leading to lifelong friendships and a supportive network that thrives even amidst competition.

We also get into how Miriam manages to maintain her productivity, and talk about the specific tools she has adopted such as Jira, Text Expander, and Notion; how she uses them, and why she likes them.

This episode is a fantastic discussion with a tenacious person who has not just found balance, but has also flourished.

If you’re interested in hearing how one person has managed the stresses and strains of an incredibly busy life, this episode is for you.

A quick note. This was recorded live at WordCamp Asia. There was quite a lot of background noise to contend with, and I’ve done my best to make the audio as easy to listen to as possible.

Useful links

Strattic

Elementor

Elementor Acquires Strattic

Jira

Text Expander

Dex

Notion Calendar

Miriam’s Twitter

by Nathan Wrigley at March 20, 2024 02:00 PM under podcast

Akismet: 8 Best Lead Generation Tools to Capture More Leads in 2024

Finding and nurturing enough high-quality sales leads is the foundation of any successful business. After all, without customers willing to spend money on your product or service, you wouldn’t last very long. 

Fortunately, many automated tools are available today to help you generate leads as well as begin to shepherd them through your sales funnel. Technology has made it easier than ever to not only attract prospects, but also to segment and customize engagement at a very precise level.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at factors you should consider when making your selection. Then, we’ll explore eight of the best lead generation tools for businesses.

What is a lead generation tool?

A lead generation tool is a software or platform designed to help businesses identify and attract potential customers (or leads) for their products or services. 

These tools streamline the process of finding and acquiring new prospects by automating various aspects of lead generation. The goal is to generate interest and gather information about individuals or companies who may be interested in the products or services offered by a business.

What are the best lead generation tool features?

Lead generation tools typically include features such as:

  • Contact forms: These are tools that allow businesses to create and embed forms on their websites or landing pages. Visitors can fill out these forms with their contact information, allowing businesses to capture leads.
  • Landing page builders: These are platforms that enable the creation of customized landing pages optimized for lead capture. These pages often include compelling content and forms to encourage visitors to provide their details.
  • Email marketing software: Some lead generation tools integrate with email marketing platforms to help nurture and communicate with leads over time. Automated email campaigns can be set up to engage potential customers.
  • CRM integration: Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems allows businesses to manage and organize leads effectively. This ensures that sales teams have access to up‑to‑date information about potential customers.
  • Social media lead generation: These are tools that assist in identifying and engaging with potential leads on social media platforms. They may provide analytics, automation, and tracking features for social media lead generation campaigns.
  • Spam filtering: This is the ability to identify and block spam to ensure that all leads are authentic, high quality and worth the time for your sales team to pursue.
  • Analytics and reporting: These are features that help businesses analyze the performance of their lead generation efforts. This includes tracking metrics such as conversion rates, click‑through rates, and other key performance indicators.

What factors should I consider in choosing a lead generation tool?

When choosing a lead generation tool for your business, it’s essential to consider several factors to ensure that the tool aligns with your goals, budget, and overall strategy. Here are key factors to consider:

  • Target audience and industry. Ensure that the lead generation tool is suitable for your target audience and industry. Some tools may be more effective in specific niches or verticals.
  • Ease of use. Choose a tool that’s user‑friendly and easy to navigate. This is crucial for efficient implementation and utilization by your team members.
  • Integration capabilities. Check if the lead generation tool integrates seamlessly with your existing systems, especially your CRM software. Integration helps streamline workflows and ensures a unified approach to managing leads.
  • Features and functionality. Evaluate the features offered by the tool, such as form builders, landing page creation, email marketing capabilities, analytics, spam filtration, and reporting. Choose a tool that provides the functionalities most relevant to your lead generation strategy.
  • Scalability. Consider whether the tool can grow with your business. A scalable lead generation tool should be able to accommodate an increasing volume of leads and adapt to your evolving needs.
  • Pricing and ROI. Understand the pricing structure of the tool and ensure it fits within your budget. Be aware of any additional costs for features or usage limits that may apply as your lead generation efforts expand.
  • Data security and compliance. Verify that the lead generation tool adheres to data security standards and complies with relevant regulations, such as GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) or other data privacy laws applicable to your region.
  • Support and training. Check the level of customer support provided by the tool’s vendor. Ensure there are resources, documentation, and training available to help your team make the most of the tool.
  • User reviews and testimonials. Look for reviews and testimonials from other businesses that have used the lead generation tool. This can provide insights into its effectiveness, reliability, and user satisfaction.
  • Customization options. Assess the level of customization the tool allows. A tool that can be tailored to your specific needs and branding is more likely to align with your business objectives.
  • Trial period or demo. Take advantage of any trial periods or demo versions offered by the lead generation tool. This allows you to test its functionality and determine if it meets your requirements before making a commitment.

Eight lead generation tools to supercharge your results

Now it’s time to take a closer look at eight of the best lead generation tools that will make the biggest difference in your B2B organization.

Akismet homepage with the tagline

1. Akismet

Akismet brings superior spam filtration to the table and can be worked into nearly any organization’s lead generation process. By incorporating Akismet into contact and user registration forms and comment sections on your website, you ensure that the leads you capture are genuine, enhancing the overall quality of your database. 

Akismet’s user‑friendly interface and efficient filtering mechanisms not only save time and resources for your sales team, but also contribute to a more streamlined lead management process. In fact, companies experience a 3.2 percent increase in conversion rates when using Akismet to replace CAPTCHAs.

Key features:

  • Akismet employs sophisticated algorithms and machine learning to identify and filter out spam content, distinguishing between legitimate sales leads and spam.
  • Akismet’s database is constantly updated with new patterns and trends in spam, ensuring your lead pipeline is squeaky clean.
  • The tool seamlessly integrates with various content management systems and platforms, including WordPress.
  • Since Akismet operates in the background, automatically filtering out spam without requiring constant manual intervention, prospects and customers are not interrupted along the conversion process.

Pros:

  • With an accuracy of 99.99% in identifying and blocking spam, Akismet can differentiate between genuine sales leads and spam without false positives that send away real prospects.
  • Akismet smoothly integrates into existing websites, making it easy for users to set up and manage spam protection without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Once set up, Akismet operates autonomously, requiring minimal user and customer intervention.

Cons:

  • While Akismet is highly accurate, it’s always possible that some comments are marked as spam. However, admins can review comments and can provide Akismet’s machine learning system with feedback to customize the filter to their site’s needs.
  • Akismet integrates well with major platforms like WordPress, but if you use a custom‑built website, you’ll have to connect via the API to implement Akismet.

Ease of use:

Akismet is designed with user‑friendliness in mind. The setup process is straightforward, especially for those using platforms like WordPress. Once configured, Akismet runs in the background, minimizing the need for constant monitoring. However, occasional checks of the spam folder are recommended to address potential false positives.

Pricing:

  • Personal users have the flexibility to name their own price.
  • The Pro Plan costs $9.95 per month for the first year and is billed annually. This plan comes with 10,000 API calls per month.
  • The Business Plan is priced at $49.95 per month for the first year and is also billed annually. It’s designed specifically for large networks or multisite installations.
  • For Enterprise Plans, custom solutions with tailored pricing are available to meet the needs of large businesses.
Overloop homepage with information about the tool

2. Overloop

Overloop is a dynamic collaboration platform designed to streamline team workflows and communication. With features like task management, real-time collaboration, and smooth file sharing, Overloop enhances team efficiency and boasts lead generation capabilities. 

The platform’s integration with popular tools and customizable workflows facilitates a smooth process, making it an ideal choice for teams seeking both productivity and lead generation in a centralized workspace.

Key features:

  • Overloop facilitates efficient task management, allowing teams to organize and prioritize sales assignments in a centralized workspace.
  • The platform supports real‑time collaboration, enabling team members to work together seamlessly to follow up on sales leads.
  • Overloop provides robust file sharing capabilities, making it easy for team members to access and collaborate on shared documents and resources.
  • Overloop integrates with a variety of popular tools and applications, streamlining workflows and ensuring a cohesive working environment.

Pros:

  • Overloop has a user‑friendly interface, making it easy for your sales team to navigate and use the platform effectively.
  • Users can customize lead generation and follow‑up workflows according to their specific needs and preferences. 
  • Overloop offers built‑in communication tools, reducing the need for external communication platforms and fostering a more integrated sales environment.

Cons:

  • Some users may experience a learning curve, especially when first adopting Overloop, as they familiarize themselves with the platform’s features and functionalities.
  • As a cloud‑based solution, Overloop’s effectiveness is dependent on a stable internet connection, potentially posing challenges in low‑connectivity environments.

Ease of use:

Overloop has an intuitive interface, but new users should still expect a moderate learning curve. However, the platform’s straightforward navigation and clear design contribute to a fairly quick onboarding process overall.

Pricing:

  • The Starter package is $49 per user per month.
  • The Growth package is $82 per user per month.
  • The Enterprise package is $125 per user per month.

Packages are tiered so that you can select the one that meets your needs best; all come with a 30‑day money‑back guarantee.

OptinMonster homepage with icons identifying various features

3. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a lead generation tool designed to empower businesses in converting website visitors into valuable customers. Known for its versatility and effectiveness, OptinMonster provides a comprehensive suite of features that enhance user engagement and boost conversion rates. 

Whether through customizable pop‑ups, exit‑intent technology, or A/B testing, OptinMonster equips businesses with the tools they need to optimize their lead generation strategies and capitalize on potential opportunities.

Key features:

  • OptinMonster allows users to create highly customizable campaigns, including pop‑ups, slide‑ins, and floating bars, tailored to their brand and audience.
  • With exit‑intent technology, OptinMonster detects when a visitor is about to leave the site and triggers a targeted campaign to capture their attention and encourage engagement.
  • Businesses can refine their lead generation efforts by utilizing A/B testing to compare different campaign variations and determine the most effective strategies.
  • Seamless integration with popular email marketing platforms ensures a smooth transition of captured leads into marketing workflows for nurturing and conversion.

Pros:

  • OptinMonster provides a variety of campaign types, catering to different audience preferences and website contexts.
  • The exit intent technology is a standout feature, allowing businesses to engage with potential leads at a critical moment.
  • Despite its robust capabilities, OptinMonster maintains a user‑friendly interface, making it accessible for users of varying technical expertise.

Cons:

  • Beginners may encounter a learning curve when exploring the extensive features and customization options offered by OptinMonster.
  • The more advanced design customization options may be limited in the basic plans, requiring users to opt for higher‑tier subscriptions for full flexibility.

Ease of use:

OptinMonster, while offering a wealth of features, ensures a user‑friendly experience. Although beginners may face a slight learning curve, the platform’s extensive documentation and responsive customer support contribute to a seamless onboarding process.

Pricing:

  • The Basic plan starts at $9 per month and covers essential lead generation features for small businesses.
  • The Plus plan is priced at $19 per month and provides additional features such as exit intent technology and A/B testing.
  • The Pro plan is geared towards growing businesses at $29 per month and includes advanced campaign options and priority support.
  • The Growth plan is for larger enterprises and is priced at $49 per month, offering additional support and optimization capabilities.

All prices are based on annual billing.

Hunter homepage with a contact's information called out

4. Hunter IO

Hunter IO is a robust tool designed to streamline and enhance email outreach efforts by providing detailed information about email addresses associated with a specific domain. 

Trusted by professionals for its accuracy and efficiency, Hunter IO offers a suite of features that simplify the process of finding and verifying email addresses, making it an invaluable resource for marketers, sales professionals, and business developers.

Key features:

  • The core feature of Hunter IO, the domain search tool, enables users to find all email addresses associated with a particular domain, providing valuable insights into a company’s contacts.
  • Hunter IO offers an email verification service, allowing users to validate the authenticity of email addresses and reduce bounce rates in their outreach campaigns.
  • With the Hunter API, businesses can integrate Hunter IO’s functionality directly into their applications, automating and enhancing their email‑related processes.
  • The Chrome extension makes it convenient for users to access Hunter IO’s features directly from their browser, smoothly integrating it into their workflow.

Pros:

  • Hunter IO is praised for its accuracy in providing reliable and up‑to‑date information on email addresses associated with a specific domain.
  • The platform is highly efficient, saving users time in the process of finding and verifying email addresses, essential for effective cold outreach campaigns.
  • With the Hunter API and Chrome extension, Hunter IO seamlessly integrates into existing workflows and applications, increasing user convenience.

Cons:

  • The free plan has limitations on the number of searches allowed, potentially restricting extensive use for those on a tight budget.
  • The accuracy of Hunter IO is dependent on the availability of public data, which may vary across industries and organizations.

Ease of use:

Hunter IO is designed with user convenience in mind, providing a straightforward and intuitive interface. The platform’s simplicity makes it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise, ensuring ease of use in the process of domain search and email verification.

Pricing:

  • The Free Plan allows limited free searches per month.
  • The Starter Plan is priced at $34 per month, offering more searches and additional features suitable for small‑scale usage.
  • The Growth Plan is $104 per month and designed for businesses with growing outreach needs, providing increased search limits and more advanced features.
  • The Pro Plan is tailored for larger enterprises at $349 per month and offers extensive search limits, priority support, and additional features for comprehensive email outreach.
Reply.io page with bullet points about the available features

5. Reply IO

Reply.io is a comprehensive platform designed to optimize email outreach campaigns, making it an essential tool for sales teams, marketers, and business developers. The tool offers a range of features that streamline the process of cold emailing, follow‑ups, and campaign analysis. From personalized outreach to automated follow‑up sequences, Reply.io empowers users to enhance their email communication strategies and drive better engagement with prospects.

Key features:

  • Reply.io allows users to create personalized email sequences, automating follow‑ups and ensuring consistent and targeted communication with prospects.
  • In addition to email, the platform supports multichannel outreach, incorporating social touches and calls to enhance the effectiveness of outreach campaigns.
  • Smooth integration with popular CRM platforms facilitates the synchronization of contact information, making it easier for teams to manage and track their outreach efforts.
  • Reply.io provides robust analytics and reporting features, allowing users to track the performance of their email campaigns and make data‑driven decisions for optimization.

Pros:

  • The platform’s automation capabilities significantly improve efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and follow‑up sequences.
  • Reply.io emphasizes personalization, allowing users to tailor their outreach messages and sequences to specific target audiences.
  • Integration with CRMs enhances collaboration and ensures that outreach efforts are aligned with broader sales and marketing strategies.

Cons:

  • Due to its extensive feature set, Reply.io may have a moderate learning curve for new users, requiring some time to familiarize themselves with the platform.
  • The pricing structure, while offering flexibility, may be a challenge for smaller businesses with budget constraints, as advanced features are only available in higher‑tier plans.

Ease of use:

Reply.io is designed with user‑friendly interfaces and intuitive workflows, simplifying the complexities associated with email outreach automation. While there may be a learning curve for some, the platform’s comprehensive documentation and responsive customer support contribute to a smooth onboarding process.

Pricing:

Current pricing is not published. Interested businesses must schedule a demo to learn more.

AeroLeads homepage with screenshots of the software

6. AeroLeads

AeroLeads provides businesses with comprehensive tools to discover and capture potential leads. The tool offers a suite of features that simplifies the process of finding and verifying leads, making it a valuable resource for sales teams, marketers, and business developers aiming to expand their customer base.

Key features:

  • AeroLeads facilitates lead discovery by providing contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, for potential leads based on specified criteria.
  • Users can conduct website and domain searches to gather contact details and insights about businesses, streamlining the prospecting process.
  • The platform includes an email verifier tool to ensure the accuracy and validity of obtained email addresses, reducing bounce rates in outreach campaigns.
  • AeroLeads seamlessly integrates with popular CRM platforms, enabling users to synchronize lead data and manage their prospecting efforts more efficiently.

Pros:

  • AeroLeads provides detailed and comprehensive information about leads, including email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles.
  • The platform offers a user‑friendly interface, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.
  • AeroLeads streamlines the lead generation process, saving users time by providing quick and accurate information for potential leads.

Cons:

  • The free plan has limitations on the number of credits and features available.
  • Some users may experience a learning curve, particularly when exploring advanced features, requiring time for familiarity.

Ease of use:

AeroLeads prioritizes user‑friendly interfaces and intuitive workflows, ensuring that users can efficiently navigate the platform. While there may be a learning curve for certain advanced features, AeroLeads’ documentation and customer support contribute to a smoother onboarding process.

Pricing:

  • Priced at $19 per month, the Take Off plan includes essential lead generation features suitable for small businesses and individual users.
  • Starting at $49 per month, the Climb plan caters to growing businesses, offering advanced features, additional credits, and CRM integration.
  • Tailored for larger enterprises, the Cruise plan is available at $79 per month, providing the next level of features and capabilities.
  • The Enterprise plan is $199 per month, providing extensive features, priority support, and increased credits for comprehensive lead generation and prospecting.
Datanyze homepage with a tagline and description

7. Datanyze

Datanyze is an intelligence platform that equips businesses with powerful tools to enhance their sales prospecting and lead generation efforts. Datanyze provides users with the means to identify potential customers, track industry trends, and gain a competitive edge in the market. With a focus on data‑driven decision‑making, Datanyze is a resource for sales teams and businesses aiming to maximize their outreach and revenue opportunities.

Key features:

  • Datanyze offers technographic data, providing insights into the technology stack and tools used by businesses, allowing for more targeted and personalized outreach.
  • The platform enriches lead profiles with detailed information, including contact details, company size, and industry, facilitating a more nuanced understanding of potential customers.
  • Datanyze provides real‑time alerts on changes in a prospect’s technology stack, allowing users to stay informed and adapt their outreach strategies accordingly.
  • Datanyze seamlessly integrates with popular CRM platforms, enabling users to synchronize data and streamline their sales and marketing workflows.

Pros:

  • Datanyze’s technographic data provides a unique advantage, allowing users to tailor their outreach based on the specific technology preferences of potential customers.
  • The platform offers detailed lead profiles, empowering users with a holistic view of potential customers and enhancing the personalization of outreach efforts.
  • Datanyze provides real‑time data updates, ensuring that users have the latest information to make informed decisions and maintain accurate lead databases.

Cons:

  • Datanyze’s pricing structure may be too steep for some small businesses, as more advanced features are only available in higher‑tier plans.
  • Due to its extensive feature set, it may take time for users to become proficient in using all Datanyze’s capabilities effectively.

Ease of use:

The tool has a user‑friendly interface, allowing people to navigate through its features with ease. Comprehensive documentation and responsive customer support contribute to a smoother onboarding experience, even with its advanced functionalities.

Pricing:

  • Nyze Lite is a free trial for 90 days and comes with 10 credits.
  • Nyze Pro 1 is $21 per month when billed annually and comes with 960 credits.
  • Nyze Pro 2 is $39 per month when billed annually and comes with 1920 credits.
HelloBar homepage with a link to preview the tool

8. Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a versatile conversion optimization tool that empowers website owners to enhance user engagement, capture leads, and drive conversions effectively. With a focus on creating customizable notification bars and pop‑ups, Hello Bar provides businesses with a user‑friendly platform to communicate important messages, promote offers, and encourage actions that contribute to the overall success of their online presence.

Key Features:

  • Hello Bar allows users to create highly customizable notification bars and pop‑ups, ensuring a visually appealing and on‑brand experience for website visitors.
  • Users can display targeted messages to specific segments of their audience, tailoring content to different visitor behaviors, demographics, or referral sources.
  • Hello Bar facilitates lead generation by integrating lead capture forms directly into notification bars, streamlining the process of converting website visitors into subscribers.
  • The platform offers A/B testing functionality, enabling users to experiment with different messages, designs, and placements to optimize the performance of their notification bars.

Pros:

  • Hello Bar allows even users with minimal technical expertise to create and manage effective notification bars.
  • The seamless integration of lead capture forms makes Hello Bar a valuable tool for businesses looking to build and expand their email subscriber lists.
  • The ability to target specific audience segments with personalized messages enhances the effectiveness of Hello Bar in driving user engagement and conversions.

Cons:

  • The free plan has limitations on features and branding, potentially restricting its use for those seeking a fully branded and feature‑rich experience.
  • Some users may find limitations in design customization compared to other more advanced website customization tools.

Ease of use:

Hello Bar is designed with a user‑friendly interface, making it accessible for people with varying levels of technical expertise. The platform’s intuitive drag‑and‑drop editor and straightforward customization options contribute to a logical user experience in creating and managing notification bars.

Pricing:

  • The Growth plan is designed for businesses that have about 50,000 views per month and costs $24 per month.
  • The Premium plan is designed for businesses that have about 150,000 views per month and costs $41 per month.
  • The Elite plan is designed for businesses that have about 500,000 views per month and costs $83 per month.
  • The Enterprise/Agency plan is designed for businesses that have more than 550,000 views per month or operate multiple domains. Custom pricing is available.

All packages are billed annually and come with a 14‑day free trial.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know which lead generation tools to choose for my enterprise?

To choose lead generation tools for your enterprise, define goals, consider your target audience, assess integration with existing systems, evaluate scalability and budget, read user reviews, request demos, check customization options, ensure data security, and align with marketing strategies. Finally, take the time to seek recommendations from industry peers.

Can lead generation tools be customized to fit my enterprise’s unique needs?

Yes, many lead generation tools offer customization options to fit your enterprise’s unique needs. For example, Akismet offers a wide variety of features designed specifically for enterprise needs that can be further customized. Such tools often provide features for tailoring forms, landing pages, and workflows to align with specific branding and processes. 

Customization may extend to integration with existing systems, allowing seamless collaboration across platforms. It’s crucial to choose a tool that offers the flexibility required for your enterprise, ensuring a personalized approach to lead generation that supports your goals and strategies.

What are the benefits of using Akismet for lead generation purposes?

By integrating Akismet with a contact form or comment section on your website, you can greatly enhance the quality of leads by preventing spam submissions. By filtering out irrelevant or malicious entries, Akismet ensures that the leads captured are genuine and valuable. This helps in maintaining a clean database and focusing efforts on authentic prospects, ultimately saving time and resources in lead management.

What types of companies generally use Akismet?

More than 100 million sites trust Akismet, including household names such as Microsoft, ConvertKit, and Bluehost, for user‑friendly spam protection that boosts conversion rates. You can see how Akismet works for ConvertKit, protecting the creator economy from spam and helping businesses generate valuable, trusted, high‑quality leads.

Akismet: User‑friendly spam protection that boosts conversion rates

Akismet stands as a user‑friendly and reliable solution for spam protection, significantly enhancing the integrity of lead generation efforts. With its smooth integration and efficient filtering, businesses can ensure a clean and genuine pool of leads, saving time and resources. As a result, conversion rates are poised to rise, allowing organizations to thrive with an influx of authentic prospects.

Elevate your lead generation strategy with Akismet’s robust spam prevention — the key to unlocking a more streamlined and effective approach. Take charge of your conversions today, and experience the difference with Akismet.

by Jen Swisher at March 20, 2024 01:00 PM under Tips

HeroPress: Tell Your Own Story – 說出自己的故事

Pull Quote: WordPress is an excellent platform and tool for learning content creation and SEO.

這篇文章同時有繁體中文版本。

“Buen Camino!” This phrase, which means “Have a good journey” in Spanish, is something I learned in the middle of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It’s the equivalent of “Hello” for pilgrims. I became a pilgrim and joined the WordPress community at the end of 2023. Telling my own story was the motivation for me to start using WordPress.

What Would I Want to Do on the Last Day of My Life?

Due to immense work stress, I fell ill. Because of a combination of issues, doctors could not cure my problems with medication or surgery. This ultimately led me to the biggest and most difficult question in life: What would I want to do on the last day of my life?

Since I have always loved nature and hiking, my hiking friends suggested that I try the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I didn’t want to go on the more crowded French way, so I chose the oldest and original pilgrimage route: the Camino Primitivo. During my preparation, I couldn’t find much information about how to prepare the camino in Chinese. Travel guidebooks and online articles rarely focused on the Camino de Santiago. For someone who doesn’t speak Spanish and has never been to Europe, preparing a camino plan for the first time is truly challenging.

How Did the Pilgrimage Change Me?

First, leaving the busy and crowded Asian cities allowed my soul to experience the long-missed serenity. I could walk for over five hours in the mountains and wilderness without encountering another person, with only the magnificent nature and wildlife as my companions. Briefly escaping from the Asian values and culture, in the faraway Spain, my heart found solace and rebirth.

Most importantly, I gained countless stories and met all kinds of pilgrims:

This made me want to write down my own story. In this era, it’s not difficult to find a free platform and become a content creator. The real challenge is what tools to use and what content to create.

WordPress Helped Me Tell My Story

Writing itself is not difficult. I published my first book: How to start your first camino in 30 days within a month. But I also realized that if I just kept writing without caring about factors like the platform and SEO, search engines would not allow my content to be exposed, which is equivalent to writing a diary.

To let others know about my creations, I decided to join the WordPress community.

Compared to other platforms, WordPress has a steeper learning curve. From choosing a host to themes and plugins, doing everything yourself is truly hard. Initially, I didn’t even know what margin and padding meant. It took me a month to complete the first minimum viable product (MVP) before I could start writing.

During the process of learning WordPress, I also got to know the Taiwanese community. From the community friends, I learned a lot that helped me become a better content creator!

Let me summarize what I have achieved so far:

  • In the last 28 days, I got 700 clicks from search results.

For several search keywords, I ranked in the top five, with some at #1:

  • “Best month for Camino de Santiago”
  • “Camino de Santiago weather”
  • “Camino de Santiago seasons” 
  • “Camino Primitivo”
  • “refne vpn”

Conclusion: Why Do We Need to Know WordPress?

In this era of overwhelming video content, it may not be easy to get people to read an entire article carefully. However, for topics that require careful planning and thought, writing high-quality articles is truly important! WordPress’ customizability and flexibility allow users to customize their own websites. At the same time, without a definable platform, it’s impossible to see if you’re executing the right SEO strategies while learning them. WordPress is an excellent platform and tool for learning content creation and SEO. Even if I create other types of content in the future, the knowledge gained from this community will always be effective and practical!

Header photo by José Antonio Gil Martínez.


說出自己的故事

Buen Camino! 這句話是我踏上西班牙朝聖之路後學到的,它就等於朝聖者的 Hello。我是 Juan 在 2023 年年末成為朝聖者跟加入 WordPress 社群。說出自己的故事就是我開始使用 WordPress 的動機。

什麼事情是我人生最後一天會想做的?

因為極大的工作壓力我生病了,而且因為多個問題結合在一起,醫生無法用藥物或手術治好我的問題,這最終就得出了一個人生最大且最難的問題:什麼事情是我人生最後一天會想做的?

由於我一直很喜歡大自然跟健行,與我健行的朋友建議我不妨去試試西班牙朝聖之路。我並不想前往旅人較多的法國之路,所以我選擇了最古老的第一條朝聖路線:原始之路。我在準備期間並沒有找到太多有關朝聖的中文資料,旅遊手冊跟網路文章很少以朝聖之路為主題。對於不懂西班牙文也沒有去過歐洲的人,第一次朝聖真的是非常困難。

朝聖帶給我什麼改變?

首先脫離亞洲繁忙且擁擠的都市讓我的心靈感受到久違的平靜,我可以在山區與荒野連續行走超過五個小時都不會遇見第二個人,壯麗的大自然跟沿途的動植物就是我的同伴。從亞洲的價值觀跟文化短暫逃離,在遙遠的西班牙,我的心得到了撫慰跟重生。

最重要的是我得到了許許多多的故事,遇到了各式各樣的朝聖者:

這讓我想寫下自己的故事,這時代要找到免費的平台,成為內容創作者並不難,難題都是在你要用什麼工具創造什麼內容。

WordPress 幫助我說出自己的故事

寫作並不難,我花了一個月就出版了自己第一本書:30天出發西班牙朝聖之路。但我也發現如果只是一直寫作但不在乎平台跟 SEO 等要素,搜尋引擎不會讓內容曝光,也等於是在寫日記。

為了能讓別人知道我開始創作,我決定要加入 WordPress 社群。

WordPress 比起其他的平台,學習難度是比較高的,從選擇 Host 到主題插件,全部都自己來真的很辛苦,我一開始連 margin 與 padding 是什麼都不知道,花費了一個月完成了 第一個 MVP,總算是可以開始寫作了。

學習 WordPress 的期間我也認識了台灣社群,從社群朋友中我學到了許多,這都有助於讓我成為更好的內容創作者!

讓我總結了一下我目前做到的事情:

  • 最近 28 天從搜尋中得到 700 次點擊

在幾個搜尋關鍵字中我拿到前五名的排序,有些是第一名

  • 朝聖之路適合月份
  • 朝聖之路 天氣
  • 朝聖之路 季節
  • 原始之路
  • refne vpn

結論:為什麼要認識 WordPress?

這時代因為影音內容氾濫,要人們好好看完一整篇文章也許不是容易的事情。但是,如果是那種需要仔細規劃跟思考的主題,寫作優質的文章真的很重要!WordPress 的自訂性跟靈活度能夠讓使用者自訂自己的網站。同時,在學習 SEO 的時候,沒有可定義的平台也完全看不到自己是不是執行正確的戰略。WordPress 是學習內容創作跟 SEO 非常好的平台與工具,即便某一天我會創作其他的內容,但從這個社群裡學到的東西也永遠有效且實用!

The post Tell Your Own Story – 說出自己的故事 appeared first on HeroPress.

by Juan Chen at March 20, 2024 07:00 AM

March 19, 2024

WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 3

The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.5 is ready! 

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.

While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.5 RC3 in four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse the following WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.5-RC3
WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 RC3 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.

The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.5-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

If you’re looking for more detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.5 Field Guide is for you.

What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC3

Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes 10+ bug fixes for the Editor and around 15 tickets for WordPress Core. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links: 

How to contribute to this release

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilities

During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.5, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or plugin

For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC3, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.5.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Release the haiku

Another RC
We are getting really close
Have you tested yet?

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @audrasjb.

by Lauren Stein at March 19, 2024 04:19 PM under releases

March 18, 2024

Do The Woo Community: What March is Looking Like Here at Do the Woo

But if you are listening to this on the day it came out, I am at WordCamp Asia along with a few of our hosts. In fact, today is Contributor Day which I am at enjoying my time with the Community team.

Now the real reason I am giving a quick update here is that between now and the end of March our show releases may be a bit off and there may be some gaps. But rest assured, things are being recorded both at WordCamp Asia followed by CloudFest as well as some of my hosts kicking shows around while I’m gone. And when I have some moments I hope to get some quick post production done here at Do the Woo.

If you don’t hear from us in awhile, watch us on X/Twitter or LinkedIn, to see updates throughout both of these events. And the fun part, you never know what shows will come out of March.

So, tomorrow starts two days of the main event at WordCamp Asia, and if you happen to listen to this, stop by our booth.

That’s it for now and hope to see you around.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: What You Can Expect from the CloudFest Hackathon 2024 Projects

If you are attending CloudFest later this month in Germany, you may also be part of the CloudFest Hackathon. You can learn more about what the hackathon is in episode, but today you are going to hear from some of the leads of the projects, letting you know what they are going to be doing and what you can expect.

These include the Enable Mastodon Apps Project, which aims to make WordPress more social and interactive, and the Inclusive Language Checker for open source contributors, which seeks to make content creation more inclusive and accessible. Other projects include integrating Marie DB catalogs with PHP platforms, improving user interfaces of WordPress using J Schema, and creating a centralized resource for frameworks and accessibility. The transcript also mentions a project to make WordPress multi-site easier to use for multilingual websites, a project to make CMSs that run public sector sites transparent, and a project to improve tools for WordPress hosting providers. Lastly, the Hack the Hackathon project aims to create a platform for hosting hackathons with one click.

Learn more about the hackathon

Read about all of the projects

Get a free standard pass to CloudFest using the code: DotheWoo

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Bringing DEIB to the WordPress Way Show with Birgit Olzem and Angela Jin

Show Transcript


BobWP:
Well, here we are with a new host joining our team and bringing a new monthly DEIB featured episode on the WordPress Way show. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and I’m honored to have Birgit Olzem as our new host. Welcome Birgit. And how are you doing today?
Birgit:
Thank you, Bob. Doing fine, even if I’m kind of feeling nervous because hosting a WordPress podcast show isn’t feeling natural to me in this certain point, so please bear with me when we are starting to kick off. But as Bob already mentioned, it’s about a topic close to our dear hearts and my aim is to help everyone to understand more about how we can contribute to the WordPress community and feel also comfortable to do so.
BobWP:
Well, I’m going to have you introduce your very first official guest and I, I’m going to let you do it, but she is of course one of my favorite people in the world, but I would rather you introduce who you’re going to be chatting with today.
Birgit:
Yeah, thank you Bob. I’m very pleased to introduce you to Angela Jin. Angela is the head of programs and contributor experience at Automattic where she also oversees the work of multiple teams dedicated to WordPress open source project, and these are community events, engagement, education and marketing teams. And her passion lies in building strong and inclusive communities. And please, Angela, tell the audience a bit more about you.
Angela:
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on your show. I am very honored to be the first guest here. And yeah, I think you captured my bio very accurately. I am originally from the United States, but I currently live in Madrid and I have family from Taiwan, so yeah.
Birgit:
That’s very awesome. And we met each other for longer time on WordCamps, but we are also working closely together in the recently founded DIB working group. For all the listeners who don’t understand the term DEIB, it stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. And the WordPress community aims to be more inclusive as possible, but as we all know, we are all humans and there’s always room for improvement. And Angela, I would like to hear more about your thoughts about the DEIB working group. How did you perceive this going on after I published a proposal to establish a DEIB, formal Make WordPress team? And so maybe you can explain a bit more about this initiative from your perspective.
Angela:
Yeah, happy to. So DEIB work is something that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve been active in the WordPress community since 2018 but have worked on DEIB initiatives long before that in other communities and I think it is essential for any community to focus on the work that has been done in the community so far has largely been through Jill Binder’s, WP Diversity Speaker initiatives, which have had really wonderful impact and she earlier this year made the decision to move on to some other passion projects of hers, which is totally understandable. She has been doing this for a long time and so it was really exciting to me to see a working group come together to focus on DEIB more broadly across the project. It is a really hard topic because our project covers so many different spaces that, and we are a global community that DEIB looks so different from place to place. And so I think I’m really excited that there are people who are passionate about this topic and want to come together to see how can we be, how can we champion DEIB for WordPress? How can we be a shared resource for everybody and help everybody better understand what it looks like when we remove barriers for people to participate and when we really help people feel like they belong in this space. So yeah, I’m really excited about it.
Birgit:
Yeah, this really interesting because the term DEIB didn’t came to me naturally before I started more researching about it. I only know the word term diversity, but learning more about what it entails to have the whole picture, I’m a person who is really more into the bigger picture and in the whole that wholesomeness of a project or the community itself. And when you say about belonging, how can someone who is interested into contributing to WordPress join the community and feel included and belonging? As you mentioned, there are certain parts which is very complex in the whole WordPress project, even as long-term contributors like myself contributing to WordPress over a decade now, and I think I know a lot, but sometimes I feel I just know a little tiny bit of the whole project and you are one of the program managers of the whole project and you need to oversee a lot, but how do you perceive this for new contributors? Can you put yourself in a shoe of a new contributor?
Angela:
Yeah, I think there’s a number of things in there. I often remind myself that our project is so big, it is impossible for anyone to know everything, and that’s challenging because I also find that WordPress contributors are people who like to know a lot of things and so there’s some self-reflection there that I always like to do when I feel like I am struggling to figure out where to go with this project. I also get lost in it and there’s a lot that I don’t know about this project and a lot more that I want to know about this project. So my reminder to everybody is that you don’t need to know everything and we have so many people who have different perspectives, different pieces of the information that getting all of us together really creates something really holistic and really beautiful. And so that’s regularly my approach when I come into my work.
And for new contributors, it is really challenging to step into such a big space and see that it is very well established. There are practices and processes and very strong open source philosophy and there’s just so much to learn and so belonging and helping people really quickly find belonging is a big challenge. The first thing that we all can do is just create a really welcoming space, which I think is why DEIB is such an integral part of our work. We also find that connecting people to other people, other like-minded people and quickly to resources and where they can make an impact is also really helpful for bringing in new contributors. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m also really excited about the mentorship program and I see a lot of excitement around that right now because I think we can all remember when we first started contributing. I don’t know that we all remember the exact first thing that we might’ve worked on, but we do remember the people who helped us get there and how they were super friendly helped us find our way, made us feel comfortable, made us laugh, made us feel friendship, and that is a huge, huge step towards belonging in there. I got so excited about the mentorship program. I forgot other parts of your question there.
Birgit:
No, it’s absolutely fine because I had in mind the mentorship program leading to this question because I was one of the contributing members of the first initial cohort and also mentor and currently you and I, we are mentoring the mentors within the mentorship program who are assisting new contributors or already established contributors to find a new space to contribute to because for anyone who’s listening and isn’t familiar with the structure, WordPress a around WordPress.org, the software piece a community has built up and there are certain teams who are working on parts within the WordPress project.
It’s called Make Teams and someone who contributed by answering support questions on the support forums, which is also a part of contributing to WordPress would like to start contributing with code on work on the core software or wants to provide their value, time and knowledge into content to educate other contributors or users how to use WordPress like on learn WordPress dot org. So this mentorship program support the shift from one make team into another or open the space and as you mentioned, it is really exciting to see how new contributors found their way into the project by a guidance one by one. It’s not that overwhelming as we already talked about. It is really because it’s an established project and really big and feeling lost becomes very depressed and that is also why I love the mentorship program by myself. So I’m really glad that this is getting more traction currently.

I wonder what would be helpful to nurture our contributors who are already contributing to WordPress. We saw a lot of contributors are more burning out or leaving the project because they were overwhelmed with too much work and less support can we do to nurture those. Maybe you can introduce a bit about the Five for the Future initiative alongside us.
Angela:
Yeah, I do see a lot of burnout. A lot of it’s a hard time right now. I think with so much economic strife and also geopolitical situations, it’s a really tough time in the world right now. And so I’m a part of some other communities outside of WordPress and I see similar things both in the WordPress community and in other communities as well. We have people who are very well-meaning with very big hearts and they are impacted by all of that. On top of that, many of us are very ambitious and hardworking and so we have so much that we want to do not just our daily jobs, but also hobbies and family. It’s a lot for any one person to juggle.
Whenever I see people are struggling, one thing that I know I can do as a fellow community member is just to check in on them and see how they’re doing. I never want to underestimate the power of just reaching out saying, Hey, how are you doing? I care about you and you mean something to me. I think that’s a really powerful way for humans to connect with each other and I really appreciate that. The vast majority of contributors that I meet, they feel a strong sense of responsibility. And so if they are on the community team responsible for mentoring a WordPress event, they really want to make sure that they do the best job possible and stick with it. And I am also a firm believer that if you are struggling so much that you’re having a hard time keeping up with all of your personal things, that’s really, I don’t want to ask you to help more than that.

That’s a really difficult position to put somebody in. And so one thing that I really love to see in our community is more of a culture of sharing the work and allowing people to more readily come in and out and pick up things that can be done like ad hoc and as people have time, I think it’s a difficult thing in the WordPress community, but we do have a number of really impactful things that people can just pick up as they have time knowing that they’ll always be welcome back and that we have a culture that allows people to prioritize their own family things and their own personal things as need be. And so that’s one thing that I would personally love to see that I think would really both benefit WordPress contribution and benefit people who want to contribute, but also in a way that is respectful of their time as well.

You mentioned Five for the Future in there and I think that’s a really excellent thing to touch on as well. So the Five for the Future program is very much about WordPress is open source software, and so it is available for anybody to take and use and build a livelihood on top of. And so the companies that have built their products, their companies, their enterprise on top of WordPress, we want them to contribute back to open source because that is how we sustain it and that is how they can also continue their business in the best way possible as well as enabling other businesses to be created with five for the future as well. Part of five for the future is sponsorship, and I think sponsorship is a really wonderful way to bring people who otherwise may not be able to contribute into this space. And so I think that’s another way that we can support people to contribute to this space.
BobWP:
I was just going to interject something there because it resonated with me is I’ve been probably involved in this space for at least 14 years. Then there was a bit before that I got into WordPress. And during all those years I’ve never per se contributed to a team. I was always, I’m a lurker, so I watch conversations, I love learning about things going on, I’ve contributed in my other ways that I’ve done and I’m not even going to go into all of that. But when you talk about the things you’ve just been saying, Angela, that and nobody should wait 14 years either. So I’m going to put that as a disclaimer too, but for me, it wasn’t necessarily even the time I had available, but when I saw the DEIB group and I started getting a little bit more into it and hanging around more and then I started participating a bit more, it was like finally, I don’t want to say after all this time, but something just hit a nerve and it was all these other things that were going on in my life and the things I was doing with the podcast and the business and a lot of stuff just came together and it was like I thought that’s it.
That’s the one I want to give my time to. And it took me a while. Again, I don’t want to tell anybody to wait that long, but if you keep your fingers in enough and so I guess I’d just say to everybody, hang in there, watch, listen to people, get to know people, and you’re going to find that little sweet spot and it’s going to fit into everything and all the other aspects of your life, both probably personal and professional.
Birgit:
I’m really glad that you found a spot for yourself. And as you mentioned, it doesn’t matter how much someone is contributing, every contribution counts and especially for someone who maybe feels afraid in contributing to a software project, you don’t have to know any knowledge of coding or development. In any case, you can contribute, like Bob mentioned in participating into text chat meeting or conversation, bring in your own perspective into the project. And that is what I personally love about the WordPress community diversity and diversity is also allowing different perspectives, perspectives from life and culture backgrounds and even life experience and the generations which is spanning over the time. And when we think WordPress, a project itself turned 20 last year, turning 21 this year.
I’m kind of getting old, but I’m wondering, as you mentioned participating into the project, it reminds me of some discussion around we are getting older as a WordPress community and WordPress might be not that famous or interesting for the younger generations, but how can we say, okay, WordPress is open source and you can contribute to WordPress even if, but you can also use and create your own apps.

For instance with WordPress, there are so plenty ideas what you can achieve with WordPress and Angela, you mentioned the sponsorship part. How do you think will be when you are looking forward for the goals WordPress project published and was working on when you keep in mind younger generations but also the established contributors, what do you see in the future of WordPress looking for the next five year, for instance? Is it possible?
Angela:
Yeah, that’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about, so I’m glad you asked it and I’m going to try my best to have a succinct answer because it’s a hard question. Yeah, I think today we are so large and we are all getting older and it’s a really interesting time in tech right now where you have a lot of new innovations that are very attractive and I think Josepha had flagged two things that she is keeping an eye on for WordPress’s future. First is that our growth has become stagnant, and so how can we increase that? It’s a huge thing for a project this big, but also a really important thing for us to keep an eye on. The second thing is are our events, which are a fundamental way that we bring people in, are they meeting the needs of what people want today?
And I absolutely love our events. I think they are wonderful and we have a lot of really good times at them, but undoubtedly we’re not seeing that younger generation come as much. And so when we put those two together, I do really think we need to think about how are we adapting WordPress and what we offer to meet people where they are. And so I’m a big fan of diversifying our events for one, to help people see exactly what they’re going to get out of our events so that they are more spread out. And therefore for people to get to the more events we have, the more varied opportunities that we have for people to participate. It is really, really difficult for somebody who is a brand new speaker to say, I am going to go to the WordCamp Europe stage and speak in front of 3000 people.

That is a scary, scary thing to do. I get nervous speaking in front of that many people and I’ve spoken on quite a few stages. And so the more we can provide different opportunities around topics that people are interested in, I think that is a really great way that we can reach a broader audience, not just the younger generation, but also people who we previously haven’t reached before. And because this is a vat, DEIB, I do think that we need to move into this next era of WordPress with DEIB at the forefront of our minds because this next generation really does care about that. And if we are not considering that as part of our practice, I think we will quickly outdated ourselves.
Birgit:
I am really glad that you mentioned that this was in my mind as well because the younger generation is really caring about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And this also for companies who are interested into sponsoring to the WordPress project. It’s also beneficial for them to get more talents and qualified talents, especially when you are hiring someone who is contributing to an open source project, even if it’s not only WordPress, but for any open source project. And someone who is contributing to a project like WordPress is also self-driven in most places and they’re interested and invested into something building for a bigger project. And this mindset is also nurturing and benefiting other companies. From my perspective, I’m a mom of five children. I built my expertise while watching my kids and I was growing into from pure curiosity. And when I started contributing to WordPress, I was visiting a WordCamp beforehand, I was participating in the forums and I got aware about WordCamps in this forum, and then later on I was facing the opportunity to translate WordPress into my native language German. And this was my kickstart to really look behind the curtain and a person, I’m always curious and I always want to look behind the curtain, how things are going, how things are working. And with this mindset, I am always moving forward. Sometimes I feel I’m kind of like a bulldozer.
And that leads me to my other question for you. In your role currently as a project manager, program manager, we had so many great initiatives beforehand. We had so many great contributors who are having talks about DEIB and WordPress several years ago before even this was kind of a buzzword. I don’t want to limit it on this terms, but why does this now work? Is this the right time or how do you feel the, it was a shift maybe in the project? I don’t know because I just put out a proposal idea because I felt the injustice in some places within a community. And I’m a doer person. I do and I cry out and I work on constructive feedback and moving things forward. But why now? I would love you to hear your thought on that.
Angela:
Yeah. Well, you’re not the first curious person to come into the space and I sure hope that you are not the last one. Curiosity is one of my favorite characteristics. I’m also a very curious person and tend to ask people a lot of questions. And so I generally encourage that. I think diversity is, if I had a magic wand and I could just wave it really quickly, I would make people understand diversity and the benefits of it and why it’s so integral to everything that we do and its importance and make a more equitable world immediately. But the reality of the situation is that we have had so many struggles, and I use we in this context as in the world. There are systems outside of much bigger than WordPress that we operate in, and those systems have been longstanding and inequitable. And so when we are faced with such a societal structure, the path to changing that is long and arduous.
And so I don’t think that it’s, for me, it’s not why now. I think this has always been an issue whether people realized it or not or whether it was in front of them or not. But I do think we have passed the point of enough is enough. And so there are a lot of people who want to see positive change and positive change is going to be really difficult. If it were easy, we would’ve fixed it Yesterday. We’re good at solving easy problems. And I realized that that is not an answer that many people like because they have been subject to injustice oppressed for a long time, and asking people to wait longer for justice is terribly unfair, which is all the more reason that we should be doing something today. And so yeah, I want us to keep going for it. I want us to create a more equitable world. And I guess we’ll start with a more equitable world for us for starters. But yeah, I think it’s a hard thing. I also don’t want to ignore all of the excellent work that has been done to date. There have been many people who have come and gone in WordPress who have championed various diversity issues, who have been excellent allies, and all of that is impactful towards where we are today.
Birgit:
Thank you very much for your insight in that as well because I feel even if I rallied and whas an ally for as long as I can think of, I wasn’t aware about, as I mentioned already about the terms itself and what it mean to someone, but also from my perspective, I am feeling I’m in a kind of a privileged situation because of my heritage, because I’m living in Germany. I was born and raised in Germany. I never experienced some tremendous issues someone else experienced, but I’m a great listener and I, I’m really thriving to learn more about what is someone facing, which issue is someone facing on daily basis working with WordPress as a software, but also being part of a broad and global community. As we already know, global means different languages, different culture backgrounds, and it is also part of being inclusive, translating WordPress for instance. It’s one of my core, but accessibility is also really, really important topic and I would love to see WordPress as a torch moving forward and being a role model for others to follow. What do you think about this as a global project? Can we achieve this?
Angela:
I agree. So one thing you asked earlier about my five-year plan for WordPress or what I would like to see in five years for WordPress, and we also talked earlier about how anybody can contribute to WordPress. One thing I would love for all WordPress to do to take on an all new incoming contributors is for them to have a learning mindset. None of us are going to come in here knowing it all, and especially when it comes to a global community and DEIB, we have to all be in a growth mindset. There is so much to learn about what DEIB looks like from even city to city in the same country and nobody is going to have the same experience as somebody else. And so it really behooves us to listen to each other, see how we’re being impacted and help each other, help each other grow in that I think that everybody is at a different point in their DEIB journey and I would rather bring people in and help them learn along the way, especially if they’re receptive to it.
What I fear sometimes is that we are so quick to call people out that it prevents a learning opportunity and that learning opportunity can over time build stronger allies. And right now we need every ally that we can get. And so that’s my hope for WordPress, that we also create an environment where we can learn from each other and better understand what issues we’re facing and how we can overcome that together because we are stronger together at the end of the day. And it’s a hard thing when we are faced with so much struggle every day. But the people who it’s also not fair to ask everybody to do this, I do want to acknowledge that there are a ton of resources out there that people can educate themselves with. And so for WordPress, that’s what I want to see, that we have strong allies who can help people out of tough situations and that we really build a shared language around DEIB. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges with DEIB work in a global community.

Even the word diversity, it’s going to be different from place to place. I come back to there was was a study on colors and how the color blue was perceived from country to country, even something like a color, which I think the color blue we can all more or less understand, but that it’s perceived so differently across different cultures like a color. And compared to complex diversity terminology, that’s hard. And so wherever we can build shared understanding around the terminology that we’re using around DEIB, that’s one really concrete step that I think would be immensely helpful.
Birgit:
I couldn’t agree more. Thank you very much and thank you very much also for your time and your well insight into this. And I’m really looking forward to work more closely with you on reaching those goals and tangible outcomes for a better and more inclusive work WordPress community. So I can only say thank you very much. I really appreciate that You will find your time, find your time to be our guest on this show.
Angela:
Thank you so much for your get it truly my honor. And I am really excited to keep working with you on this as well, so we could do it.
BobWP:
And obviously there is a lot to be talked about and I’m looking forward to having Birgit come on once a month here to at least do this show, do something now. I know we got to get going, but some people are hopefully maybe listening to this as they’re flying to WordCamp Asia, they’re driving, they’re on their bike, maybe they’re even jogging. I don’t know what they’re doing. They’re getting there somehow or other once they’re, I just want to have Angela share just a little teaser about her panel she’s going to be on because that might be something you want to attend.
Angela:
Yeah, so WordCamp Asia overlaps with International Women’s Day on March 8th, and so I am very excited to be hosting a panel about women in WordPress. So we have three rock stars who are going to be joining me to share their stories about their experience as women in tech and to hopefully inspire the crowd who’s listening and help us get more diversity into technology.
BobWP:
Great. And Birgit you’re going to be having a panel yourself, at CloudFest which follows WordCamp Asia. Why don’t you just give a quick little spiel about that before we go. In case any of our listeners are attending CloudFest.
Birgit:
We will have a panel with two other tremendous guests and we are talking about inclusivity and also sustainability in WordPress and how we can be more sustainable with our human resources. For instance, as we mentioned, the burnout churn is really high currently and we are looking for we discussing ideas, how we can prevent those churn and be more inclusive, but also sustainable.
BobWP:
Alright, cool. Well, I can’t wait to have you back on every month. I’m sure we’ll have Angela come on again sometime. And I just want to thank everyone for tuning in and I’m just going to do one quick little teaser. If you’re on your way to WordCamp Asia, make sure and stop by the Do the Woo booth. I have these really cool DEIB stickers to give out and I’m not going to even tell you what they look like because you have to stop by the booth. So yeah, thank you both. Looking forward to having you on the hosting team Birgit and thank you Angela.
Birgit:
Thank you Bob.
Angela:
Thank you.

In her debut show co-hosted with BobWP, they have a chat with Angela Jin, head of programs and contributor experience at Automattic. And what a conversation it is.

It starts by discussing the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the WordPress community.

Angela highlights the need for a learning mindset and shared language around DEIB, especially given the global nature of the community.

The conversation also touches on the challenges of burnout among contributors and the importance of creating a welcoming space for new contributors.

Rounding out the episode, Angela and Birgit both express their excitement for the future of WordPress and its potential to be a role model for DEIB in tech.

Links and resources


by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: All Things CloudFest 2024 Hackathon with Christian, Carole and Alain

Guests Carole Olinger, Alain Schlesser, and Christian Jäger talk about the upcoming events.

The Hackathon, now in its seventh year, is expected to be the biggest yet, with around 140 attendees working on 11 different projects. The projects are all designed to serve the open source community, with a focus on collaboration between different CMS ecosystems. The Hackathon also includes a friendly competition, with awards sponsored by partner companies.

The money raised from these awards goes to the Groundbreaker Talents initiative, which supports female developers in Uganda. The podcast also touched on the first-ever diversity and LGBTQ+ event at CloudFest, Rainbow in the Cloud, which will support three different charities.

Christian also touches on WP Day and how that evolved to be part of CloudFest
CloudFest
CloudFest Hackathon
Get your free ticket using code: dothewoo


Show Transcript

Robert:
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Woo DevChat at Do the Woo. And we are having a great time today talking with the folks who are running CloudFest and the CloudFest Hackathon. I’m very excited to have my guests here, Carole Olinger. Alain Schlesser and Christian Jäger. Welcome everyone.
Carole:
Hi there.
Alain:
Hello. Hi.
Robert:
Thank you for having us. It’s certainly our pleasure. I don’t know exactly when this will go up, but we’ll be close less than a month away before CloudFest and the Clou Fest Hackathon. And I guess in order of the activities, let’s kick it off with CloudFest and lead organizer, Carol Olinger.
Carole:
Yeah, my name is Carole and I am the head of CloudFest Hackathon, which is going to be our main topic today. And yeah, I’m doing that for several years in a row and it is really one of my favorite projects during the year. And yeah, this year we are going to be celebrating also the 20th anniversary of CloudFest, so we are even more excited about what …
Christian:
Makes us old.
Carole:
What is expecting us during CloudFest and the days leading to the main event, CloudFest are all about the CloudFest Hackathon and the WP Day. So I am passing over the mic to Alarm who is one of the project mentors during the CloudFest Hackathon. So what are your thoughts on this year’s event?
Alain:
Yes, thanks. I am really looking forward to this year’s event. The CloudFest Hackathon has always been a fantastic event that highlights some of the creative problem solving of the open source community. It allows open source contributors to come together via the funds of the general sponsors, of course, to tackle some of the projects that can bring the open source CMSs and larger open source hosting ecosystems forward. And in the past we had some very influential projects that have gone on to really have an impact that came out of this hackathon. And so I’m looking forward to this year’s setup of projects that we have to see what will come out of it.
Robert:
That’s excellent. Really. It’s interesting because as Carole mentioned, this is going to be the 20th CloudFest but Hackathon is relatively new. Christian, can you tell us a little bit about what got that CloudFest Hackathon going in the first place? Yeah, thank you very
Christian:
Much. The hackathon, the first edition I actually came to join was 2022. The first edition we did at CloudFest was 2019, Carole, is that right?
Carole:
Actually, I think there was a few previously, but that was even before I was involved. I think it started around 2016.
Christian:
See it says seventh edition. I should just look at our website. So 20 years of CloudFest, it’s going to be the seventh hackathon, the biggest one ever. And the reason why we do it is there’s actually two reasons. One of it, it opens for us as a conference organizer. It opens up or it builds a bridge to a totally different audience, namely the CMS contributors and also how to activate our typical attendees, which are cloud service provider to take a more active role in our ecosystem, namely by helping or supporting the hackathon, which is a project by the way, which is not run for profit obviously, but it’s to really enable the community to hack or contribute and really design new products. And if I may say, so the first edition 2022, I had little idea besides what Carol, of course told me what’s going to happen. So I thought it’s going to be a room full of tech and geeky people eating pizza. And actually it was, but we didn’t have pizza, but we had that the German French equivalent, which is called Flammkuchen. But actually only after the event, I realized the enormous work and the value the hackers contribute. And not because I understood what everyone was doing, but I understood the impact it had for our core attendee group, which is called service providers. So I’m super happy I became a super fan ever since I attended, and I’m really looking forward to the biggest one yet. Carole did an excellent job and along with the selection of projects, so really looking forward to it.
Robert:
It’s hard keeping track of everything Christian with being the CEO of CloudFest.
Christian:
We are trying hard, we’re a good team here.
Robert:
So Carol, last year was easily the biggest hackathon in my memory. How many folks did we have and how many projects?
Carole:
So we basically had around 120 attendees last year and we worked on 11 projects and that was also what we determined the good size for the event. So this year our attention was not to actually make it bigger, so we wanted to stay with the 120 attendees. But what is really interesting is of course we invite a little bit more people because plans may change and it’s always a few people that are not being able to make it. Then sadly Visa arrangements cannot be realized. But this year we invited more people to end up with 120 and it’s unbelievable. Every single person confirmed. So that is really a testimonial to the people that are applying to attend this event, do it because they know they will be there. So that being said, here’s the teaser. We are going to be 140 people for this edition.
Robert:
Oh boy.
Carole:
Still working on 11, obviously different projects. So this is for real going to be the biggest CloudFest Hackathon ever.
Robert:
Brilliant. Congratulations. Before we dive into this year’s projects and put Alight on the spot, who are the, well, let’s forward a little bit of the format because there are some winners and second place and third place, and how does that work and who were our champions last year? So we only have champions at CloudFest. Yeah, just want to say well said Chris.
Carole:
Yeah, so let me pick up this question. So basically we introduced last year based on the feedback that we got from attendees from previous years. So-called Friendly competition. We did that already in the addition of 2022, but in 2023 we brought it to a next level where we wanted to support a charity organization with the awards that we are basically select winners for. So what we did is we reached out to our partner companies and attendee companies and ask them to sponsor the different award categories that we defined for this year. So for example, we are going to have a future of the web award. We are going to have a social media master award, which is a really good one because it’s done at the award in the team that creates the most boss during the hackathon on social media. And there are three more categories and an overall hackathon winner.
And all these awards are tied to a sponsorship from one of our dear partners for the event. And everything that we are going to be raising in terms of money is going to go integrally to the Groundbreaker talents initiative, which is really amazing and dear to my heart because it empowers and supports female developers in Uganda. So last year we managed to fund a whole year of scholarship for a CO developer. And with the help of CloudFirst, we invited that person to this year’s hackathon. So we will be able to all meet in person, our dear Vanessa, who already got certified with the Groundbreaker Talents program.
Robert:
It’s amazing. I saw the email from CloudFest earlier this week or was it last week? And that really is one of the great things about what happens at the hackathon, what happens at CloudFest in general, and Groundbreakers is really a fantastic organization. It is just so cool. I want to touch on a little slightly technical before we dive into the projects. This is primarily open source. I don’t know if it’s exclusively, but it’s close to it. Would that be fair?
Alain:
It is all meant to serve the open source community either directly or indirectly. So there might be projects where there’s no actual code being produced, for example. So saying everything is 100% open source is difficult if there’s different ways that value can be produced. But in the end, all the value that is being produced will serve the open source communities and we specifically pick projects in that regard as well so that they serve a greater purpose and are not just a marketing vehicle or a product offering of a single company or so. So while not everything, as I said, will technically be open source, everything lives under the open source spirit.
Robert:
And I remember specifically that I think it was in 22, that the Joomla team that was there put together more of an open source specification rather than actual code to paper code to computer pet to paper code to computer. So yeah, there are some interesting opportunities. So yeah, let’s dive into the 11 projects that’ll be going on at the CloudFest Hackathon, I’ll let you run through whatever order you want.
Carole:
Yeah. Then let’s start maybe. So I don’t want to go into the profoundest details here because as far as I know, and I’m going to tease, I’m going to be teasing once more. There’s going to be an episode where the actual project leads will deep dive, dive deep, dive deep into their project themselves. So we don’t want to do that twice. But I’m just going to pick a project that is particularly dear to my heart, which is the inclusive language checker for open source contributors, which is going to be led by Birgit Olsen. So where the primary goal of the project is to standardize accessible and inclusive documentation guidelines across different WordPress teams. So this is also a project that is very much tied to the values that we as organizers want to share with and for this event. So accessibility and diversity and inclusivity are really important to us. And in order to have the attendees for this event really representing the industry and having them more diverse, it was also important for us to be on the lookout for projects that represent these core values for what they are aiming for as goal setting. So this is one example and I am also super proud to say that we have a female lead for this project and teaser again, it’s not the only one. So that is one which I’m particularly excited about.
Alain:
Every project has a very special place in this hackathon, I guess. So yeah, let me preface this by saying that we had an overarching goal this year because last year we noticed that there was a bit of a separation between the different ecosystems, between the different CMSs. And so this time we added some active involvement to make sure that the projects are more collaborations between CMS and between ecosystems. So where last year for example, as you mentioned, Joomla did a project where they worked as a team on one feature for their open source offering. This time around we want the Joomla folks to spread over the spread along the projects. We want to have the CMS garden being involved area and so on and so forth. So there was an active effort that we did to make sure that we don’t have islands of ecosystems that all work on their own separate projects, but there’s a lot of cooperation going on between the individual ecosystems.
Carole:
For example, we do have a project that is targeting different CMS at the same time, which is called CMS Health checks, which is led by Neil Lanner, where you do already have commitment from Joomla, Drupal and type of three communities together with WordPress one. So that’s a really exciting one. We do have an accessibility project, which is also targeting all the CMSs and the industry at large because accessibility is important to all of them equally, right? This is called can Everyone Use, which is going to be led by Anika Bob. And then we do have a MariaDB project, which is also going to be equally important to different CMS project. It’s going to be led by Andrew Hutchings directly from the MariaDB Foundation. And the goal is to integrate MariaDB catalogs with PhD platforms. So that’s definitely projects like Alan said, that are targeting multiple CMSs and not only WordPress, while of course knowing that WordPress has the biggest market share and is according to its market share, also a little bit more represented amongst attendees of the CloudFest Hackathon.
Robert:
Yeah, it does look like there are two more specific WordPress projects for the hackathon, but it feels like it’ll be less than last year, which is great, but it does, and I don’t want to leave Chris out of the conversation being bombarded with technical information. Last year was also the first year for sort of the WordPress day. How did that come about
Christian:
WordPress or when I started in the business in 2011, and I keep repeating that sentence even though it doesn’t have to do something with WordPress is in 2011 everybody told me VPS is dead and shared hosting is dead. And now we are 2024 and it’s still probably the two most compelling products for pretty much all mass market providers. Now there is of course a second incumbent and a new layer which is added to this equation, which is WordPress.
Robert:
So you’re saying WordPress that just like VPS and shared hosting,
Christian:
It’s like Exactly. WordPress, is that this is what I’m saying? No, it’s actually as that as the other two. And the reason is that it became one of the anchors for many of our visitors. So they all either already have WordPress offerings or they are even now not concentrating on getting new customers in, taking over other hosting companies. More consolidation. No, they’re even looking into WordPress. They can integrate into their own offerings in order to say, well, I have this add-on which is exclusively available at my service. And that undermines a little bit the importance of WordPress in that particular case. And this is also the main motivation where we said, okay, there’s so much in here. There’s so many requests at the hackathon initially dealing with WordPress that we have to do something more. And this is when we were approached last year, Hey, wouldn’t you be able to do this start firsts earlier?
We don’t need a specific content and we would rather like to share ideas. And it was a big success. The room was packed. We also had a few learnings from organizational point of view, and this is why we did it this year, even more professional. We made it part of the official agenda. So it starts basically a day earlier. People don’t have during CloudFest, they’re super busy with meetings and attending other sessions, but the Monday seems to be a good day where in the afternoon everybody’s already on site and has time to be invested into sharing the recent knowledge about WordPress. And this is why we said, okay, this is the perfect topic, the perfect place, let’s make something out of it. And this is how WP Day was designed.
Robert:
And since we’re on do the Woo, of course there’ll be WooCommerce conversations as well. So it’s actually a very nice kind of lead in throughout almost 10 days of Europa Park Madness, I can’t think of another word except madness because it’s so intense, so productive and so valuable.
Christian:
You would see me on Saturdays super tired, but super happy hopefully. So the Saturday after the entire, I was going to say,
Robert:
So the Saturday after the event, I was going to say which Saturday, definitely not.
Christian:
If it’s the first Saturday, then I made something wrong or the heck has really wanted me to party.
Robert:
A quick question. I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of this. Can folks who arrive early actually take a look at what’s going on in the hackathon peek in, see the winners and sort of the closing ceremonies I guess, of the hackathon?
Carole:
Yeah, actually if they come find me, we can always arrange something, especially if I remember correctly, we did that with pleasure in the evenings so that there wouldn’t be too much of a distraction during the day. But yeah, everyone’s basically welcome to confine me and see if we can do a sneak peek. And it is also very, very good for us in terms of finding new potential partners for the additions to come. So yes, but what we cannot do is accept attendees on spot. So like I said, we are already at 140, so it wouldn’t be possible to just join on a Saturday and say, okay, I’m specifically interested in this project and can I now start hacking here for the next two and a half days? So that’s unfortunately possible because of the success of the event, but if anyone wants to come by and say hi, we can certainly arrange that. And yeah, I’m looking forward to meeting all of you in that case.
Robert:
Yes, I know a lot of travelers from us and maybe Asia we’ll also be coming a day or two early so that it might, first of all, just for time zones, trust me, I know that experience. So I get there a little bit earlier, you mentioned partners and the sponsors. I think it would be a shame if we don’t actually mention the hackathon sponsors since they are the folks that are facilitating, getting the spaces, getting the time, getting the hotel rooms for the hackers, I guess we can call them.
Carole:
Yes, let’s do that. So yeah, this year we do have 12 confirmed partners, and before naming them, we still do have one open slot for a partnership package two and one open slot for partnership package one. So in case anyone out there listening in is interested in getting a board to CloudFest hackathon, please reach out directly to me and you can do that via email carole@CloudFest.com. And like I said, very, very limited spaces. So hurry up.
Robert:
And that’s Carole with an English E at the end, just so people
Carole:
Oh, good one, very good one, very good one. Yeah. C-A-R-O-L_E@CloudFest.com. Yeah, it’s amazing how I know how my name is spelled, but should be amazing.
Robert:
Before we get into that list, I just want to make a very funny aside. Literally everyone on this call has English as a second language. I may be the most native of the speakers, but it actually is a second language as well. So that’s where we’re having a lot of fun with Carole and Alain.
Carole:
But most importantly, let’s name our dear sponsors for the CloudFest Hackathon. So this year we have Intel, Ionos, Inpsyde, HostPress, Group One, Greyd, Codeable , Cloudron, BotGuard, Automattic, and the Alma Linux Open Source Foundation. Thank you.
Robert:
I mean it’s an amazing, amazing group of folks. Definitely some of these are hosting companies, WordPress focus, but even seeing some like Intel supporting the hackathon, that’s a very, I think prestigious for the hackathon as a whole, that such a large organization is putting the money where the mouth is about open source development and all of that.
Carole:
And they’re supporting the hackathon for many years already. And because they’re doing that, I also want to mention that they’re organizing an AI Summit during the first day of CloudFest. So that’s also something I’m looking forward to because that’s the new thing. Everyone wants to be up to date about what’s going on with ai. Even I, and I’m not technical.
Robert:
If I hear AI one more time, I’m going to start doing a Jäegermeister with Carole.
Carole:
Yeah, it’s got to be the most important. If you’re going to do some Bingo competition with the buzzword that has to be in the middle somewhere,
Robert:
It’s like the center square because someone’s going to say it no matter what. So just block it out.
Carole:
Or the drinking game each time.
Christian:
It’s either that or quantum computing. It’s like these two I hear every day.
Robert:
Oh, okay. So I’m going to test you on that because Quantum has actually, at least from an anecdotal perspective, taken a huge back side to ai. Is there anything, I know we’re talking about a hackathon, but it’s fun to get some little snippets about the CloudFest agenda as well in here. Is there going to be anything quantum related?
Christian:
No, actually we had Quantum last year and the year before, so this year we are really focusing a little bit more on ai. And the reason why is it why that’s the case is not to get on your nerves, Robert, even though of course that could be an argument. But the main driver is we ask the audience what specifically they would like to learn. We do a survey called State of the Cloud, and there we collect the feedback of over a thousand cloud service providers, which have already replied. And there were two main replies, which we identified the first one being AI and how does it actually impact my business? Is there a business case for me being maybe not intercompany of the world? So what does it mean? How can I profit from it? Can I actually profit from it? And the second one was the takeover of Broadcom and VMware and whether there’s going to be a partner program anymore.
So another strange topic which is emerging right now. And then the last one is always about, and that’s interesting because it was the same last year, is about international collaboration. How can I learn from other market participants which are maybe doing business next to me or doing with me or maybe even competing? And that’s actually how we derive this year’s theme, which is uniting the nations of cloud because I mean obviously we could talk about nations in the sense where you’re from different countries, we have over 80 different countries attending, but nations could also mean the technological background an attendee has. So there could be a product manager, software developer could be a hardware producing. So these kind of nations. So the fields of interest or whatever you’re going to call it. And this international collaboration of these nations is what clouds is known for.

And the hackathon is a perfect example because without knowing it by heart, there’s already people from all over the world. As Carole already said, we even have our talent from Uganda, which is flying in last year. We were able to finance five talents in total, one coming only out of the hackathon participants, which is freaking awesome this year of course I’m hoping for six. So we will do our part to make that a reality, but it shows that this collaboration part is so important to our audience and to our community and it’s even ever increasing important. So it’s really cool we have the hackathon helping us to achieve that goal.
Robert:
Yeah, I think that’s a great point because I think we have folks from every continent except Antarctica. So I know yet, so I was going to say Christian and Carole next year we need to at least someone who’s maybe spend some time there.
Christian:
Yeah, sure. Let’s do a local meetup. Antarctica.
Robert:
Challenge accepted now. There we go. The challenge for CloudFest 2025 Hackathon, someone who’s been not just a vacation but actually spent time in Antarctica. Okay, okay, that’s good. Folks listening to the podcast, can’t see the weird look Christians giving me like, okay.
Christian:
Was thinking about is the Linux Penguin actually from Antarctica? But I dunno,
Robert:
Nice, but I don’t want to, in fact, I want to even go deeper into this. It’s great how almost like 10 days of a program really works out here because the hackathon gets I think new people who would not traditionally go to CloudFest to see what this global experience is like.
Carole:
We definitely see a huge increase of people. So basically when they sign up we ask them, are you also applying to attend CloudFest? Or maybe do you have already made arrangements? And I can see a huge increase of people transferring their interest from maybe having attended the hackathon a few years back and not so much interested in CloudFest to shifting that. And I would say at least 50 to 60% of the people that are attending the CloudFest hackathon are now attending day one and beyond of the main event. So that certainly is a result of having this complimentary program elements like the WP Day and an AI summit. And so everything we built throughout the last editions, but it’s also a result of the hackathon projects and initiative itself because we built this connection between the deciders and the big companies of the industry and the open source world, the contributors to the open source project. So with that connection being built over the years, it is clear that that shift into the main event cloud first and that is really, really amazing to see. So that’s something I’m actually really proud of.
Robert:
Yeah, I kind of see it in three parts. We have the hackathon, then we have WP Day and the Intel AI Summit and then really sort of that official get ready to meet, what are we looking at? 8,000 people at CloudFest now, plus or minus. Yeah. Even if we’re rock by 10 or 20%, it’s still going to be a huge, huge event. It’s going
Christian:
To be a full house. Please arrive early, bring some patients, especially on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, be ready for queuing. Very British but it’s going to be full house and be ready for getting in line.
Robert:
On sort of a little fun note. How does one survive 10 days?
Carole:
You find out, tell me.
Christian:
Yeah, eating a lot of flammkuchen and some Jäegermeisters.
Carole:
And then there’s crazy people like Robert and me who are going to go to WordCamp Asia the weekend before, which isn’t Taipei, Taiwan for anybody who doesn’t know. So that is definitely going to be an interesting month of March for all of us.
Robert:
Yeah, I’m looking at about three weeks, not at home.
Carole:
I just also wanted to mention there’s something that we didn’t talk about yet about when we were mentioning the projects. What is really important for me to say is also something that we started doing a few additions back when we were trying to have more targeted goal-oriented, diverse and inclusive projects as already done. We were coming up with concept of having project mentors and offering guidance throughout the process of having an idea for a project and then having it set up for the hackathon goal oriented, having the right ed audience defined and making it a success. And in that context, I wanted to mention, so we have Alan here who is one of the project mentors that we have for the lost edition and for this one, but we also have Lucas Radke and both of them are doing such a brilliant work in guiding our project leads through the process and finding and determining the derived projects for our events. So I wanted to give a shout out to both of them and maybe Alan can say a few words more about how the process looks like on their end.
Alain:
Oh yeah, sure. So yeah, I have been doing this already last year together with Lucas. So we are already a properly trained team on dealing with that. And this year we wanted to go through what we’ve learned last year. So last year we were very specific about what types of values we wanted to have represented in the projects and from the ideas that were submitted, we tried to actively shape those so that we could have some of those values represented. So we wanted to have sustainability, accessibility, things, big topics like that, that were represented through the projects. And then we made sure that the projects represented those values and that we had the right people to lead those projects to get a successful outcome. And this year we are still continuing down this trend, but also we learned from last year where everything as I mentioned was a bit too isolated.
So this year it’s also we want to tie everything a bit closer together across the ecosystems. But what I wanted to mention is that from how I perceived this hackathon, it has started as just an annex to the cloud first. But we slowly, we actively worked on making this a more integral part so that we get a proper bridge between the open source communities and the businesses where the value is created and ultimately where the money is being generated. Because oftentimes those topics, it’s a bit of a taboo to mention them in the same sentence, open source and money, they tend to not go well together. And as project mentors we really try to get the general ideas of these open source communities but then produce the version of the project that makes the best use of this specific circumstance where businesses are funding this, where businesses are present at the main event so that the open source community gets proper access to these resources and then can bleed over into this business segment.

And also more importantly, and I think that is often the harder part to do, have the business topic bleed over more into the open source communities, they tend to isolate themselves from that business, but ultimately without required funding, all of these open source projects will ultimately have trouble succeeding. So this amalgamation between the open source spirit and resources that a business focused event and the participants at that event can provide that is just such a powerful happening that happens once per year as far as I know, I don’t know of any similar event happening like this. And as project mentors we try to properly guide the project leads to make sure that they can properly tap into the resources of this specific circumstance.
Robert:
Yeah, I think that is a great point Alain. And if we look at the sponsors for Hackathon, those folks are all sponsoring open source developers day in and day out, either as true sponsorships or as employees within their own companies. So and maybe some kind of strange perfect utopian open source world, everyone could just do what they want and it is critical to have small, medium, large organizations keep open source projects going. And that’s great to see. We are kind of running out of our podcast time before the mysterious man behind the curtain. Bob cuts us off. One little thing I’d like to mention on one of the days, I’m going to let Carole talk to this because she’s done so much of the work we are having Rainbow in the Cloud. If you can just give a little, when is it, where is it and what’s it about?
Carole:
Oh yeah, I’m so excited about that. So this year CloudFest is going to host the very first diversity and LGBTQ plus event, which is called Rainbow in the cloud. You’ve got to love that name. Do you? Right? So Rainbow in the Cloud is going to happen on the second day of CloudFest, which is Tuesday, March 19th after the main concert concert in the hotel in the bar called Commedia dell’Arte, which is also known as the karaoke bar.
Robert:
Yes, the karaoke bar.
Carole:
And not surprisingly there is going to the karaoke, but more than that we are going to have a few very colorful and glittery surprises for you during that event. And the main goal besides obviously raising awareness for having a more diverse and pride friendly industry and including that like showcasing this during CloudFest because that’s the values that we all care for in the organizing team and as an industry, we also thought it would be really, really great supporting a few charities in that matter with the event we are organizing. So long story short, again, we reached out to our partners, so the partner companies of CloudFest, but also attending companies for CloudFest to sponsor this site event. And a minimum of 50% of all the money we connect toward this site event is going to go to three different charities that we chose. And one is a female empowerment company, which is called Anita B, the other one is out in tech and the third one is called Rainbow Railroad. So again, if anyone hears the call and feels like, hey this is so amazing and I want to support this, please reach out to me on Carol with an e@CloudFest.com and we can certainly make it happen that you are going to be one of the amazing sponsors for CloudFest very first diversity and pride event.
Robert:
Perfect. I’m very excited about it. Yes, I am helping Carol with that as well. So I do have a vested interest in seeing Rainbow in the cloud be quite successful. I’m thrilled that the CloudFest team has really put their full support and weight behind putting this together. Again, one of the many reasons folks should be attending Cloud Fest in Germany at Europa Park for Americans, Europa Park for everyone else. So we already know how to get ahold of you Carol, so Carol with an e@CloudFest.com. Also the hackathon at hackhackathon.CloudFest.com.
Carole:
Yeah. So yeah, you can always reach us there and get more information and yeah, really, really looking forward to seeing you all there. I can’t wait and I cannot believe that one year has already passed since we were in Europa Park for the last time.
Christian:
I tell you.
Robert:
And I guess Do the Woo has a nice little coupon code for free standard Pass, which is dothewoo with two o’s of course. So we know how to get ahold of Carole at CloudFest. Alain how we get ahold of you, how can we make your life more difficult?
Alain:
I’m probably best reachable on Twitter X @schlessera is my nickname and per email if you want to reach me regarding the CloudFest, it’s Alain.Schlesser@gmail.com.
Robert:
And Christian.
Christian:
Happy for everyone of the folks listening in to join our cloud festival and you can reach me cj@CloudFest.com and really I will be waiting with open arms at the gate Monday latest or for the hackathon on Friday and Saturday. Of course, really looking forward and appreciate the work Carole is doing and Alain are doing. And of course you are doing robot in making all these great community projects are reality. And that’s not only the hackathon, which I told you earlier, I became a super fan without knowing what I’m a fan of the first year. Now I know, of course. And then now we started this rainbow in the cloud initiative, which it shows that the community contributes actively. It’s like an open source B2B festival we are doing in a way. So I really, really, really much looking forward to it. I
Robert:
I love that Christian. I think that is a great way of putting it open source B2B festival. We now know the tagline for 2025
Carole:
And that’s exactly what should happen. That is exactly what should happen. I think there’s so much potential in uniting those both worlds of mine and those both worlds of us and many of the people out there. And yeah, I am an advocate for doing that in the WordPress ecosphere and beyond. Let’s unite the open source and business world. Please.
Robert:
Thank you all so, so much. I am so excited for another edition, seventh edition of CloudFest Hackathon, 25th edition of CloudFest. Everything starts really getting going March 16th and goes a solid week afterwards. So very excited. So you can check out hackathon.CloudFest.com or go directly to CloudFest.com to get more information. And I’m sure there’s some tickets left, but it is going fast and crazy people book this a year in advance. Thank you so much all. Can’t wait to see you in March.
Carole:
See you. Bye.
Christian:
Thank you very much for having us.
Alain:
Thanks everyone.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: WordPress Translation, Internationalization, and Documentation with Estela Rueda & Pascal Birchler

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They highlight the work of the Polyglots team in translating the software into different languages, making it more accessible to users worldwide. And also share about the upcoming improvements in WordPress 6.5, including a new translation system that uses PHP files for faster performance.

All three of them encourage more people to get involved in the WordPress community, emphasizing that it’s not just about knowing the software, but also about understanding the culture and the people.

And they end with a common love for a food dish that Estela and Pascal not only enjoy eating, but making as well.

Find them on WordPress.org

More links


Show Transcript

Abha:
Hello, and we’re here for another WordPress Way on Do the Woo. I’m Abha Thakor and we’re continuing our journey around the world, finding fascinating people who are doing the WordPress way, but also can tell us a little bit about the Woo too. So stick with us and stay on our journey. So today we have Estela Rueda with us, and Pascal Birchler, and we’re going to have a very interesting conversation about translation, internationalization, documentation. In fact, we might find a few other things that ending in Asian and talk about those two. So stay with us and let’s see where we go. So welcome both of you. It’s so nice to have you here. Now, Estela, I never know where you are currently in which country. So tell us today, which country are you coming live from?
Estela:
Hi, Ava, how are you? Thanks for the invite. First of all, where am I located now? Today I am in Italy. I recently moved, last two months ago I moved to Italy. That’s where I am living.
Abha:
But that’s not where you’ve from, is it before? Where did you grow up?
Estela:
That’s a different answer from where I am from. I really don’t like it when people ask me where I am from because it depends on what you want to know. It’s always a different, always a different answer.
Abha:
I tell you what, tell us some other countries that you’ve hopped over to so that we can get a flavor of the international Estela.
Estela:
Well, let’s see, Mexico, that’s where I was born. I grew up in the US in Mexico somewhere up and down. I went to college in Costa Rica. I got married and moved and lived in the Netherlands for a long time. Then I went back to the us. Then after that I moved back to the Netherlands and then Slovakia, and now I’m here in Italy.
Abha:
Love that. This is why you are one of the perfect people to be on here talking about internationalization, and I know that international background of yours also means that inclusion is a really important part of your work in the WordPress and the do the We community too. So thanks for telling us all that. Pascal, where are you coming in from today?
Pascal:
Hey everyone, thanks for having as well. It’s a bit more boring here. Born and raised in Switzerland and I’m still in Switzerland today.
Abha:
There is nothing boring about Switzerland. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. So whereabouts in Switzerland are you coming from
Pascal:
In Zurich?
Abha:
That is got to be one of my favorite cities. So I think it was last there for WordCamp Zurich seems a lifetime ago, but it was only just before Covid. So I had the pleasure of coming to speak at that. So it’s an amazing place to be right now. We all know it’s a really busy time because when we’re recording this at the moment, we’ve just had beta one for the WordPress 6.5 release and all three of us in fact have been quite busy who had this release. So I wondered if we could just give people a little bit of an insight into why is it that both of you do give time to the release and you do give it in such an amazing number of teams from design, documentation, polyglots, performance and core. So why do you do that and why should people think about that?
Estela:
I think it’s important that you get involved with many of the teams, not just one and just focus on one thing because nothing that we do within WordPress, within Woo, is just focus on one thing. If you want to change the design, you need to talk to the developers, you need to talk to Core. And if you change something, you need to document it. You need to let people know what you did, whether it is documentation for developers, what is documentation on the features that is just for end users. So always, always have to talk among teams. So belonging just to one team sometimes makes most of the time I’m going to have to say that makes no sense.
Abha:
I love that answer. And in fact the blog I’m writing in my head now is just that’s going to start with that answer. And it is true. I work and volunteer in probably about seven different teams actively, but they all have touch points and my work tends to focus on actually where they touch and it really does make a difference. I don’t think I would’ve been a good docs if I hadn’t understood core and I certainly wouldn’t have been as good if I hadn’t understood training. And this time I was doing a lot of work in training too.
But performance is the one that really I’ve learned more most about being docs co-lead for the last release because it affects everything. I thought it just affected this little bit over here and this is like an add-on thing, but we look at before or maybe we look at after, but I did not realize until I worked with Pascal and Joe and all the wonderful people in performance that actually it affects every single thing that we do and probably should be more in our focus as people learn to use WordPress and it be something that when you start as a developer or you start making sites as a site builder, performance is right up there in the first things that you learn. And of course who better to ask that question to than Pascal?
Pascal:
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean performance affects everyone and it’s not just you as a user of WordPress when you’re writing new continent WordPress or you use your site, but it also affects your visitors and that’s why it’s so important to improve performance across the board, both on the backend and front end. And yeah, I think in the recent years we’ve done a pretty good job already, but there’s of course always lots more to do.
Abha:
Pascal, do you remember offhand how many performance improvements they were in? 6.4? I should know I did the field guide, but I can’t remember at this very moment. I know I was absolutely stunned by how many,
Pascal:
Oh, I don’t have a number in my head because there’s so many, sometimes there’s bigger changes, but there’s so many smaller improvements as well if it’s some caching or some code optimization. So yeah, I don’t have a number, but it’s definitely a lot of improvements.
Abha:
I tell you what, we’ll put it in the link in the show notes just so that people can read how many there were. I was looking at the piece right now and it was quite phenomenal and I think if you are thinking of that performance is an issue for your WordPress site or even that you’re debating working with Wu and WordPress because of performance, you need to check out this post on WordPress 6.4 performance improvements and look at the work that’s happening now because it really shows you that performance does not have to be a problem. In fact, the ability you have with speed with WordPress and Woo is phenomenal. Say Pascal, if you were suggesting WordPress and Woo to other people, what would you say to them if they were hesitant about performance with the software?
Pascal:
Don’t be because WordPress is known for powering some of the biggest WordPress, some of the biggest websites in the world and also WooCommerce. It can scale to super large sites and it’s definitely proven to be a robust and performant choice and there’s performance plugins that you can use. There’s always something that you can do on your hosting side of things as well. So yeah, it’s definitely, performance is definitely, you don’t have to worry about performance when you’re going with the WordPress and Woo.
Abha:
And I think sometimes it’s a misnomer and people have this idea what it is and it limits and actually it’s not. But that also brings me back to the value of documentation because especially in the work for the last few and in our shows here, we’ve been explaining how important documentation is because if you understand what you need to do on your WordPress site to make it perform better, then you’ve got more chance of it actually doing that because it’s not often the software that’s limiting, it’s how much you can read in terms of documentation, how much you can learn about how much you can learn from your peers. And to that, I have to go to Estella who’s nodding at me going, yes, yes, yes, this is exactly what we’ve been telling people. So Estela, you tell them.
Estela:
Well yes, documentation is very important, but documentation in all levels right now, WordPress dot org, we have many levels of documentation. We have the support forums which will give you the one off questions very specific. They also have articles and stuff that they’ve been recollecting from answering many things. Then we have documentation for end users, which are people that are non-developers that they want to know how to do the basic stuff on their side, make it look nice, look pretty working, that’s all they need to do. We have documentation for developers and they go all on the deep stuff, all the code, everything in the backend that not everybody understands, but that’s good for them. And then we have Learn which are longer tutorials, video or just reading that people can learn at their own pace. And these are good when they want to learn about one specific feature or how to create a specific feature, how to create a theme for instance, or how to create a plugin or how to run performance. It’s like very specific topics. That’s what it is.
Abha:
And it’s all available for free.
Estela:
Yes, it’s all available for free and many of these things for the longest time, you have to go and look around the web, Google as much as you can to find it. And what we are trying to do nowadays is to have them inside WordPress dot org so that people know that this is, we we’re the ones that build it and we’re telling you how to do it, how to fix it, how to work in it, how to learn about it.
Abha:
And the beauty of course is that right now we’re going to be working on documentation for end users. That starts pretty much in the field guide as well as beta 1 comes in and if you are passionate about these things and you want to help other people or you wish something was documented but you can’t find it, this is the time to come and volunteer. The same for performance because the core performance team have regular meetings, they’re a fairly new team and they’re pretty awesome. And I’ve had Nini who’s been helping me research for this show and she’s just sent me a message to say that they were 64 tickets with a focus on performance in 6.4, which is pretty good. And that’s just main tickets. There was lots of other things as well in addition to that. So this is a happening team as of course this documentation and you get virtual cookies too. These are important things to get. They make you smile and being able to smile in a day is quite important.
Estela:
But if you’re at attend work camps and you go to contribute this, you get real cookies for the documentation.
Abha:
Now I’ve missed out on these. I’ve been at WordCamps and I haven’t had the cookie, so I’ll need to have a word with the development people and see if I can get some wonderful one sent across. So it 6.5 obviously has a lot of things in the release. And for our regular followers, we have got a show that’s coming to you in mid-March with a 6.5 and we’ll be looking at all the wonderful things in that as well. So if you’ve got questions that you’d like to be included in that or that we can research for you, do send them in and we’ll try and make sure we can follow those up too.
So for 6.5 and beyond, what would both of you like to see as different in a release in terms of how can we get more of the translation understood, more of the need for internationalization understood. And also just a bit more, I dunno if understanding is a quite word, but there is a lot of work that our polyglots do, our polyglots or our volunteer translators for anyone who’s not heard that term before because they have quite a short time to translate the release into their local language so that WordPress can be used in that latest software more easily in that locale. So Pascal, I’m going to go to you first of all, I know something that you feel very passionate about. What would you like to see if you had a wishlist that would make translations and their importance and all the perfect translations and all the internationalization work that you are involved with, what would make it easier and what would be your dream?
Pascal:
So one dream that actually already came true, which is that on translate WordPress dot org, you can now translate plugins or core itself directly inside WordPress. That is very important because sometimes you have a text that you need to translate but you don’t know where it’s used. But so you can just basically open WordPress and then you see the string in the necessary context and you can translate it right in there and then upload those translations. I think that’s an amazing change that happened. And the other thing, I think it’s just in general maybe for developers to translate their use WordPress in another language during development because just so often strings are not actually translatable and we have to fix that. That’s always a bit annoying. It would help to use some plugins or just change the language to just use WordPress in another language to get that experience.
Abha:
So where do you think that would be the most effective during the beta testing the RC time? Or do you think that would be when we’ve got a live release
Pascal:
Even before beta, I think especially when developing a big new feature, it can happen that things get forgotten, but beta is of course the ideal time because that’s where we start focusing on bug fixing. So especially during the beta period, it’s a good time to fix those translation issues.
Abha:
I’m just thinking about how we could make that workflow easier. Do you think something on Learn possibly might help with that if we showed people how to do that?
Pascal:
Possibly? Yeah, I think the worker’s playground is already very helpful because it makes it easier for you to test WordPress with a different setup. You don’t have to change your main website to do that. So maybe making it easier to do this via playground would be helpful. But I don’t have concrete ideas right now.
Abha:
The beauty of this show is that we have a lot of people who come back after listening and go, actually, we could do it this way. And it also people we’ve had guests before who’ve gone away to their teams and go, could we do this? And it’s great because we like that at Do the Woo, we like not only being about empowering and sharing the community, but also coming up with good ways of people working together. So I think we’ll take that definitely to the next learn meeting as well.
So it is really important just so we’re aware that when we’ve got new things like WebPress playground, we will put that it’s in the show notes. If you listen to our show from last month, we had a whole section on WordPress playground as well. But if you not sure what it is, there are tutorials, there is help documentation on how to use it. And as Pascal said, it doesn’t have to change your current setup to be able to use it. And you can test WordPress too and be part of the releases in the making. We’ll share some of those in the cross link in the show notes too. Estela, okay, I need to know your dream now. What would be your dream to make it better for Polyglots internationalization and translation?
Estela:
My dream is almost coming true, almost coming true.
Abha:
I love this.
Estela:
So the GlotPress team has been working on improving the plugin to be able to take long tests, long text, and it may be they are planning on launching this new plugin in WordCamp Asia, which unfortunately I’m not going to be able to be there. But the people that are going to be there, they’re going to see it and I am really, really looking forward to it. That is one. The other one is one that I’m still working on is improving the style guides for every language. This style guides have been written up while long time ago, I don’t know. Some of them haven’t been updated in forever. In recent years, we have had many issues and changes in the language in all languages.
And how do we address, we had the problem of gender, we have problems of how to address people. Yeah, sometimes it’s formal too informal or gender, the feminine and masculine like English is easy because it’s a neutral language, but Spanish, no, everything is feminine or masculine and there is nothing in between. So we need to learn how to address these things not only in the way we name objects because that grammar, we’re not going to change it. We cannot change the grammar, but we can learn and give tips on how to address things like the users. We always call them masculine, so maybe we need to find a different way of naming them this kind of thing. And Spanish is not the only issue with this, right? A lot of other languages have these problems. Also the integration of English terms that are non translatable.

A lot of languages just decided to keep the English term and not translated. So I think that improving the style guide that we have that will make it easier. And then using AI to translate with always, always finishing with a human review doesn’t go from chatGBT straight to blood press ever. You need to check, you need to read it and you need to make sure it doesn’t read like a robot. It needs to read like a human is telling you what to do and how do you do things right?
Abha:
Absolutely. So yeah,
Estela:
That’s it.
Abha:
It’s almost coming true. I love it. So of course that means that next time we will have to find you a new dream so that we can work towards that as well. So for anyone who doesn’t know, can you just share what GlotPress is?
Estela:
GlotPress is the tool that is used by the polyglots team to review the strings, make sure that they are the same, that is the same terms, the functions. I don’t know if probably Pascal knows more about this because it’s used more in development or core than it is in documentation. So I dunno if Pascal knows more about how it’s or what it is, how to use it.
Pascal:
Sure, I mean GlotPress is basically a WordPress plugin and it’s what powers translate WordPress dot org. It’s used to translate not only WordPress itself but also all the plugins and themes in the directory and I think even the mobile apps and some other parts.
Abha:
And we’ll find a way of linking that in transcription as well. So for anyone who’s not come across it before, but those are really cool. There’s a really good things that are coming up. Pascal, you’re also got a hit GitHub work that you’re doing on various things relating to translation, but particularly performance translations. Do you want to share a bit about how that makes a difference to WordPress and therefore also to what people want to do with Woo?
Pascal:
Oh yes, absolutely. So it’s always been known that the translation system in WordPress, how WordPress loads translations, et cetera, is a bit slow, but it never got attention it deserved. So last year we did a very thorough analysis on the performance of the translation system and as a result we built a completely new translation system that is more performant, uses less memory, but it’s backward compatible. So everything still works the same. And we put that into a plugin called Performance Translations. So everyone could just install this plugin and if you are using WordPress in another language, your site should be instantly faster. And the good news is we are now merging this plugin into WordPress 6.5.
So technically you don’t need to plugin anymore. So just update WordPress and it gets faster. And the main thing that this new system does, it uses a new file format for translations. So if you have ever translated WordPress or dealt with translations in a way you might be familiar with those .po and mo files that are used by WordPress. And we are replacing that with PHP files. So PHP files that hold all the translations because loading a PHP file in PHP, which is the language that WordPress has written in, is much faster than having to load those binary mo files.
Abha:
And that of course not only improves performance, especially once it’s in core, but also makes that more available to more people who don’t have to do plugins because not everyone has that ability if they are having a site that’s been built for them, they can’t always add plugins. But having that feature facility within WordPress core means that more people could use it. And of course that has a direct benefit for if you’re adding WooCommerce on top because you can already have something where you can translate it much more easily. With WordPress playground, as we’ve talked about, you can test how your service that you’re having may appear in different translations as well. And I dunno about you two, but I definitely think that the understanding of why translation is important really has taken much firmer hold globally in the last two or three years compared to what it was like a decade ago. And I’m going to go to you first Estela on that.
Estela:
I think even five years ago, I think five years ago we were not still so sure about translating. It was one part, the core was being translated, that’s what poly gloves were doing mostly. And people locally were writing their own content, but nowadays we are translating even more. And I have insisted a lot on this and whenever I can I talk part of inclusion is giving WordPress to people in their own language, in their own culture, within their own culture. Why? Because there is this saying, there is this saying that says give a man a fish, feed him for one night, teach ’em how to fish and you’ll feed him forever. It’s the same thing if we teach somebody how to use WordPress, that somebody may have a work for a lifetime, they have a job, they have skills that they can move on and there you go.
So I think that that’s what we need to be doing now and we need to take away that part that says if you want to learn WordPress, you must learn English or speak English. I don’t think that that is true and that should never be true. We need to stop that, we need to avoid that and we need to go around that and say, okay, we want to include as many people as possible and we’re going to teach as many people as possible how to use WordPress, how to work with WordPress, how to create a life with WordPress, a business, anything that you want to do. And that’s why I insist on translating documentation from developers for end users. Because also is that thing, you do not need to be a developer to create a blog and with a simple blog you can create a business,
Abha:
Right? Definitely. And it is about empowering and it’s about having that empowering globally. And I know one of the questions that we did, part of the research for this podcast today was about well, but we was different. But actually there is for everybody out there who thinks that there isn’t a localization aspect of WooCommerce, I can tell you there is and there’s lots of people actually involved with it and you can contribute to your localization to core and they maintain translations of the WooCommerce project on GL press. So you can translate it, you can take part in the teams who are working@webpress.org, the whole thing works together and that’s the beauty of it. It isn’t that, oh, I have to start again. The more we can translate to WordPress, the better that is for people using it for WordPress and all its different ways it can be used, but also for those using it for WooCommerce products, it really is about the future.
And we’re not going to go back to a place where everything just has to be in English. The world has moved on considerably from that and that is a good thing. So if you haven’t thought of these things before or you thought a plugin was what was standing in your way, have a look at 6.5 and we will include in the show notes after it becomes into core, we’ll get Pascal to write as little paragraph to go in it as well and a link so that people who think, okay, what do I do now? Where do I go? We can direct you because a lot of it is about education and education in a positive way because as we share, we learn. And that’s why we have so many hundreds of locales. We have so many people and in the shows on Undo the way we do try and get across different countries as well and to see what people are doing.

So if you’re listening to this from a country we haven’t featured yet, please let me know on NonstopNewsUK or Do the Woo on Twitter, or actually you’ll find us, look us up and we’re there and better still subscribe to our do the Woo feed and you’ll have lots of ways to be in touch. I’m going to move us slightly sideways and Estela, apart from living in lots of different countries and having just a huge amount of international experience and also probably a lot of dishes and foods that you’ve tried, which I’ll come back to. How did you first start using WordPress and feeling that actually it was the software that you wanted to invest your time, not only as a professional but also your volunteering time because that’s quite a commitment. When did you have that moment where you felt, this is what I want to do?
Estela:
Yes. Let’s see, I started long, long time ago. I think it was with 1.4, 1.7 something around there. I started building my websites, my first site just with S-D-M-L-C-S-S because that’s what we had back in the days because, and I had my first business as a virtual assistant. I needed to find something that would allow me to make money while staying home because I had a little child, I had a little boy and I wanted to make sure that I was there for him. Somebody recommended WordPress, I went to WordPress and then I made my enemy number one, the Codex. Okay, I hate the codex with everything that I can. I don’t think I hate anything else more. I just couldn’t understand that I’m not technical, I’m not a developer. So the codex always, always stop me. So I went back to CSS and TML, I took a class on WordPress and I learned how to use it and that was like three point something when I learned how to use WordPress and I loved it and I’m like, oh my God, you can do so many things with this.
And I started going here, going there and learning how to do things. And then mobile fast to nowadays, I went to work in Europe in Berlin, which was two 19 at a contributor day. I was sitting at the design table and I’m just going, we were beginning with Gutenberg, it was the beginning of the development of Gutenberg and everything was magical and nobody knew what we were doing, but everybody was there. And I told someone like, I don’t like this. Just reviewing tickets, giving, making comments on tickets and stuff. I think I need something more. I need a project. I don’t feel like I’m giving much. And they said, okay, that’s easy. And they sat me at the documentation table and then these people started talking about things. I had no clue that existed. It took me probably about three or four months to understand that they were talking about moving the codex into documentation, separating from the end user documentation and the development documentation.

And I’m like, oh my God, I love that. I’m all for it. Get rid of the codex. I don’t like the codex. Now I know that the codes has been useful, it had a lifetime, but I think that we have surpassed it, right? And yes, there are a lot of documents in there that are not being updated and we are little by little retiring it until it will go away eventually. The documentation that we have nowadays been it’s different. And I work in a special project with the documentation team for the end user documentation to everything. The articles give them an order, giving them a reason to be somewhere and they have a life or more a path. It’s like what is WordPress? Is this something the CMS good for my project? And then it teaches you requirements, maintenance, all the stuff that you will need before that teaches you what is WordPress, the parts of WordPress, the features.

And then you have all the information you need, all the tutorials you need to make it look great in a way that a non-developer can understand it. And yeah, that’s it. That’s where I’m stuck. I just love it. And I’ve learned how to write technical documentation and I’ve learned a lot. And that’s why you see me sitting at meetings at different meetings where sometimes I just say hello and I’m just sitting looking at Slack, just going like this, reading, reading, reading, reading. So that I learn what other teams are doing. Sometimes I understand the conversation, sometimes I don’t. But it’s okay because I have things in my head that tells me, oh, okay, so somebody was talking about this, so the topic is this, or they are working on this feature, they’re working on that feature. And I can talk about it or at least I know about it. That’s what I do.
Abha:
Well, if that’s not a reason to be inspired to join in and learn not only more about the projects and how to do the different things, but also improve your own abilities and knowledge so that you can use it in your own workspaces too. It really is. Thanks Estela. And it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you now over, oh, I’ve lost count how many years? But it’s been wonderful. We’ve worked at WordCamp Europe’s and documentation Polyglots. I think core releases it goes on. But as Estela said, even if you don’t understand something straight away, observing is a great way to actually learn and there isn’t really a stupid question. So it is about working together because at the end of the day, we also want to encourage the next generation of people contributing to the project. And that doesn’t have to mean a younger generation. It can be just people who, at whatever time of their life may now want to contribute and not know how to start or need to see someone that they can relate to and who has skills that are similar to them or an area that they’ve always wanted to work in. So come along, get involved. And Pascal, I know you are just amazing. I’m going you to tell a little bit about what your day job is as well and just to show that you can mix the two.
Pascal:
Yeah, sure. So my day job right now is actually contributing, or for the most part it’s contributing to WordPress, especially WordPress performance. It wasn’t always that way. I used to work for a WordPress agency building websites for clients, but now I’m part of a team that is focusing on improving performance in CMSs like WordPress. So not just WordPress, but mostly because WordPress is powering 40% of the web or something. It’s pretty big. So yeah, main focus is performance. The performance team that you mentioned earlier. Right now I’m a co tech lead, co core tech lead for Repress 6.5. So I also have to make sure all the tickets are done and closed and fixed for the release and make sure all the deadlines are kept and things like that. It’s maybe a bit more project management in coding I would say on that part. But I also have fun fixing box. The performance translation thing was very dear to my heart because I started using WordPress also not in English, it wasn’t German. So performance translations has always been very important for me. We have so many contributors to performance team, but also 6.5 in general. So I try to make sure people feel welcome, guide them wherever possible, point them in the right directions.
Abha:
And Pascal, you’re a developer relations engineer in your day job working with Google. And do you feel that your work there is enhanced by the fact that you have been a contributor for so long and you have worked with people across the globe?
Pascal:
Oh absolutely. I think having contributed to WordPress before is why I was able to join Google to work on WordPress. It’s not about only about knowing the software, it’s about knowing the people, knowing the culture, knowing the community, how things work. When I’ve seen people just arrive at WordPress and I dunno, proposing some change without knowing how things work, they usually get upset or frustrated and leave again because it doesn’t match their expectations. So yeah, being in the community for so long, it’s definitely made it easier to how to see how things work and go with the flow and go basically I changed from spare time contributor on my weekends to it full time, so it made the transition much, much easier.
Abha:
Thanks, Pascal. I know both of you are very valued in the team and by many contributors valued to dear friends too because that is one of the things about the community is that you get to know people really well and you may not get along with everybody, but that’s okay. It’s such a big community that you can find people that you can work with and learn from and also learn different ways of thinking. And I think anybody who does join, I think particularly we’re focusing on translation today. If you get a reply and you think, oh, I don’t quite understand that, or it seems like maybe they don’t want me there, it’s probably not the case. It’s probably just remembering that the person you’re writing to or write or is writing to you, English may not be their first language and sometimes it can come across differently than it’s intended.
And I think that’s one of the big learning things. And I think the more you get involved in translation, the more you actually understand that. That is super important to know. And when we we’re writing and talking to think about, will somebody else who is not used to doing this day in, day out or to translate everything in their head as they’re speaking or reading, is it easy for them to follow that? And if not, how can I make that a little bit easier? Because that all comes down to us as well. And of course more things join us together, then they do that separate us. So as people know who know me from for a while now, know that I have a thing about WordPress and food and recipes and as we’re particularly after Covid and during Covid, getting people to think about eating health relief for their wellbeing, but also as a cultural way of coming together, keeping in touch and for sharing cultures.

It’s a great leveler and a way of people to discover other people that they may not have contact with. So I was really surprised when interviewing people from one from Italy and one from Germany, and they came up with the same food that they love to cook when they’re working. So I am intrigued. Did you two speak to each other before this broadcast? Because you both came up independently with the fact that you liked one particular food. And I did a quick look in. The trusted researcher in the background here has had a look at how popular this food was. Now I’ve got a slight pause before I tell you what this food is and see if you can decide yourselves. So Estela, can you describe it without mentioning its name?
Estela:
Lemme think, it’s a sauce. Some sort of sauce. Not really a sauce, but some sort of it you can eat it with. I actually eat it with Italian bread, which is amazingly delicious. Oh, I moved two blocks away from the best bakery that you have in Italy. So you see me, you find me there every morning at seven o’clock in the morning so I can get good breath. Recently coming out of the oven. There’s also, it’s a Mediterranean dish, we like. Ingredients? I dunno, you can also add flavors to it. I like to eat it sometimes with extra olive oil, sometimes I put a little bit of chili on it. If I’m feeling adventurous I add extra garlic and yeah, I tried even one time with avocado now it’s not good. Trust me. Do not mix it with avocado. It turns very weird. Green color.
Abha:
No. I’m going to jump quickly to Pascal. Pascal, you have 10 seconds to describe this dish without telling people what it is.
Pascal:
Alright, creamy, great for dipping goes well with pizza bread as well. Or I dunno, maybe cucumber for example. You can do it at home as well, or just buy it in store.
Abha:
And I think we’ve given them enough time and thank you Nini, who’s just popped into the chat for me that the global market for this product is worth 2.62 billion in 2020 and it was projected to grow to 6 billion by 2028. Now I should tell them really why it is, shouldn’t I? Because they’re going to want to be able to cook it. So the favorite item for these wonderful people, a developer relations engineer, in your case a UX strategist, is hummus. And I am going to want your hummus recipes so that we can pick some of the best ones to make live on our cooking show that we are going to have while we talk about Woo and WordPress. Because why wouldn’t you? And hopefully we’ll see two of these people with us as well, sharing their recipes. And I told you we’re going to have to cover food at some point.
All that leaves for me to say is thank you very much to Estela and to Pascal for joining. Do the Woo and talking about WordPress and WooCommerce. We’ve loved being in Italy and in Switzerland today. If we can come to be your country, then let us know. I really want to cover as many continents as I can this year. Thank you for joining us. We’ll put everything in the show notes. If you’ve discover something that you’d like to know a bit more about, do let us know on our different, do the Woo channels and we’ll make sure that we come and talk about those too. So thank you to both of you and we’ll see you soon.
Pascal:
Thank you.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: WooCommerce Plugins for Portugal with Marco Almeida

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Marco shared with us his journey into web development, his focus on creating plugins for the Portuguese market, and his involvement in the WordPress community.

He also touched on his recent decision to offer lifetime licenses for his plugins, explaining that while it may not be sustainable in the long run, it gives customers more options and allows him to test new ways to sell his products.

Marco emphasizes the importance of giving back to the WordPress community and staying connected with others in the industry.

Connect on X aka Twitter


Show Transcript

BobWP:
This is special because this is from my new home country. I mean, you’ve all heard me talk about how much I regret moving away from the us, which well, now I never said that, but I’m dope. But Marco, my friend, welcome to the show.
Marco:
Hi. Thank you for having me and welcome to Portugal. I think I told you this several times now, but now it’s official.
BobWP:
Marco’s been a big help in a lot of adaptations for both Judy and I here and stuff, and he even helped me get my cell phone. I have to say this, I couldn’t even get my cell phone working right, the right plan. So he actually took me to the mall and he talked to them, got it all figured out. It’s like, yeah, I was a mess. Let me say that.
Marco:
Just helping a fellow WordPress person.
BobWP:
Yeah. So you do development, you do all sorts of cool things, plugins. We kind of focus a little bit on the product end of things, but why don’t you tell everyone who you are, what you do, all that good stuff.
Marco:
Okay, so my name is Marco Almeida, as you said. I’m from Portugal. I live across the river from Lisbon since forever. And yeah, I got into the web development really soon. I’m 44 now. I got into it around 20 and yeah, that’s what I do.
BobWP:
Yeah. All right. Okay. So you have your plugin site and then you have a development business.
Marco:
Exactly.
BobWP:
Can you tell us a little bit about both of those?
Marco:
So in 2005, so almost 20 years now, I’ve opened the typical IT company. I had a partner, we did IT support. We sold hardware, consumables, typical corner shop stuff, but we worked mostly with companies. And at the time, I already did some web on my previous jobs before I opened my own company, and I was working on my free time on a CMS, A content management system that we started using on this company web to build websites for several companies. I think most of the people my age in the WordPress world probably have a similar story of having built their own CMS at the early ages. And then time I took over the company myself alone, I didn’t wanted to do that. IT support selling hardware, consumables, all that stuff, and I focused more on web development. Well, WordPress was natural. It was a natural transition from the CMS that I developed and something that would be more flexible. And so it really went really natural. Funny enough, that CMS that I had, it was based on rows and columns, something that we now call blocks 20 years ago, which is really fun to see right now. But yeah, so I started using WordPress, I think around 2010. I published my first plugin on the repo in 2011. I think it was a plugin for open graph text to share your posts on Facebook and Twitter with the correct thumbnails. Funny enough, it was my first plugin and it’s the only one I’ve sold so far. I’ve sold to WP experts around the time of WordCamp Asia last year.
BobWP:
So what got you into the plugin? I mean, it’s like some of the stories we get from different folks we have on here is that the plugin often came from a need with a client. Yeah, same way.
Marco:
Exactly. Yeah, I think that that’s a common for everyone. So yeah, this plugin I was talking about, it was a need that I had myself and I just published on the repo, and so I start publishing plugins on the repo really soon. In my WordPress journey, most of the plugins, as you said, were stuff that I had a need for myself or for customers of mine I was developing websites for. And I also, in the early ages, I got into e-commerce. So there were a lot of needs, specific needs mainly for the Portuguese market. And that’s why nowadays there’s several plugins, several free plugins and premium plugins that I own that I developed that are mostly focused on the Portuguese market. And yeah, that’s how I got on.
BobWP:
Yeah, I find that interesting because when we first met, and I remember looking at your plugins and stuff that, yeah, it’s on the Portuguese market and I don’t see a lot of, well, I’ve seen some developers do that, but there was, what made you mean obviously there was a need that needed to be filled and nothing was available. And so how many of your plugins are you specific to Portugal?
Marco:
Well, probably on the commercial plugins, I have 10 commercial plugins, and I think six or seven are focused 100% on the Portuguese market. On the free plugins, I currently have 20 free plugins and probably also six or seven focused on the Portuguese market. And you were saying about the specific needs, I can give you some examples. For instance, the VAT number, which is something that in most countries is something that it’s only for companies in Portugal, what we call a fiscal number, which is the same as a VAT number, but for a person, and that’s something that WooCommerce doesn’t have the fields too, so I created a plugin for that. Also, we have a payment method in Portugal that it’s exclusive of Portugal, and it’s the most, so it’s the one people trust the most. And at the time there was no WooCommerce plugin for it. So I’ve implemented it and it’s now the most used payment gateway in Portugal. So there were really specific needs that someone had to do specifically for Portugal.
BobWP:
Yeah, that is really interesting. And the one you were just talking about, that’s the payment gateway, right?
Marco:
Yeah, it’s a payment method that exists in Portugal, I think for more than 35 years now. So when you get your, for instance, your utilities bill, like the electricity bill or the water bill, if you get it on traditional mail, in paper, you normally get a reference, an entity and the value, an entity, a reference, and the value. And you can go to any ATM machine or your own banking service. You just put on the reference the value and it’s paid for and it’s all automatic. So people trust this for a long time way before online shopping was a thing. And so at some time I had a customer that needed that wanted to implement that on his website, and there were already some companies providing that service with an API, but they weren’t building plugins for shops. They were just providing the API and expecting for each and every shop owner to implement it. So I saw an opportunity there. It was funny because I called them and told them, so I’m doing this for a customer and I will probably publish on the public WordPress repo. And they told me, so the company is called If then Pay, and they told me at the time, yeah, you can do whatever you want, just do not. We have nothing to do with that. You are the one who has to give support. We just provide the API. And I was like, okay.
Funny story, like six or seven months after they were the ones calling me saying, yeah, we got to talk. Because there’s a lot of customers going in because they first go to the repo, they install the plugin, and then they see, oh, I need a contract with this company. And so of course we now have an agreement. Well, this was launched in 2013, so we are 11 years now, and we have an agreement for the last 10 years. And of course now they’re paying me to keep the plugin and support the customers. And so we have a commission based agreement. So each payment that goes to, yeah.
BobWP:
Wow.
Marco:
And it’s more than 7,000 stores, right?
BobWP:
Oh, I bet. Because I remember when I first, somebody explained to me about being able to pay this at the ATM I was somewhere and they said, well, you could just go and pay this at the ATM, I think it was at the hospital. And I had paused and I thought, because I’d seen it, but I didn’t really didn’t connect and stuff. So that’s amazing. How do you Now I don’t get to talk. Most of the times it’s my host and I don’t get to talk with a lot of the product makers. What makes you decide when you do a plugin, you’ll have some that are free and then some that are premium. What makes you decide to go to the premium route?
Marco:
So at first, as I was saying, so I started publishing plugins on the repo, so free plugins very early. Although that payment gateway, although it’s a free plugin, I’m still being paid to have it online. So it’s almost a commercial plugin, not for the customer side of it, but for me as a developer. And at first it was giving back to the community and also put on my name and my company name on in public, getting to be known as a developer, a WordPress, and specifically a WooCommerce developer in Portugal. And there’s probably not a lot of Portuguese online shops that don’t have at least one plugin. One of my plugins installed because I made them so specific for the Portuguese needs, and it was really natural. At some time, I got contacted from someone from Angola, the African country, they used to be a Portuguese colony, and they were also trying to implement, they have basically a copy of our banking system there.
The payment methods are really similar, and so they wanted to implement that same payment method there. And so there was not a lot of potential for users, but they agreed on paying upfront to develop that plugin. And at the same time, I made a pro version, and that was my first commercial plugin. Actually, it was a payment gateway, not for Portugal, but for Angola. No, interesting. But it was really a test and I was not expecting for it to sell so much and didn’t, it’s not a commercial success for sure, but then the real first one that made me start with a premium. So for instance, another thing in Portugal, most countries of the world, if you have a PDF file or a piece of paper, you can call it an invoice that doesn’t exist. In Portugal, we, for several years now, every invoice must be issued by an IRS certified software.

So you cannot just make a PDF file and call it an invoice. So for instance, on WooCommerce, on the right side, on the other actions, when you have that option sending invoice to customer, that’s not legal in Portugal. So for instance, in the Portuguese translation of WooCommerce that I work on, we remove the word invoice from that string. And so I was doing some integrations with an API to one of those certified softwares for some customers. And from the early stages, I thought that this could be a really good commercial plugin because the shops needed, but there were already two solutions on the market. One of them was from Marcel Schmidt that very well. And so at one time, Marcel decided to do something else and he reached out to me and he told me, Hey Mark, well I know you are working with the same API.

I know we would like to have a product. I’m going to do other stuff. Do we want to take this plugin? We can reach a financial agreement on this. And so I took it. There was a lot of stuff to do. We were around the time WooCommerce 3.0 was launched and there were significant changes that we needed to do to the plugin. And so I released a version 2.0 of that plugin after some months of, and that become the first profitable plugin that I had. Funny enough, the competitor was also a friend of mine that called me the day I launched my plugin say, oh, I have a great success. We are now competitors on this. And I ended up buying his plugin also.
BobWP:
And I wonder how many other plugin developers, various parts of the world ever think of these more specific needs within their country? I mean, the couple of things there, for example, I didn’t realize with the multi bank that it’s Portugal specific, that nobody else does that at all. And yeah, that is really interesting
Marco:
And I think it’s a good way to get into the plugin development because you have a laboratory, very small user bases that you can test your stuff with, your commercial practices and everything. And that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m starting to do some plugins that are for the global market of course, but creating them for Portugal.
BobWP:
I want to also touch a little bit on community and stuff with you because I know you’re really involved. But sticking with the product thing, I know that you recently went to lifetime licenses. I mean really recently. Don, your plug is like,
Marco:
I announced it today
BobWP:
And I saw it on X. It’s always hard to say x, I still want to say Twitter, but I saw that and I’ve seen these discussions go on and on about that. What made you decide to do it? I mean, what convinced you to go that route?
Marco:
So first of all, as I was telling you for instance, when I bought that invoice express plugin from Marcel and from the other guy afterwards, they were both on lifetime licensing, but it wasn’t sustainable because they were charging the same value that I charged today for an yearly license and they were charging lifetime license. And I think that’s why we saw a lot of lifetime deals completely disappear. Some of them, even in some strange situations where they don’t honor the previous license. So I bought a lot of lifetime licenses that I use still today, like a CF, like WPML. So I have a ton of lifetime licenses that I still use. And so when I started doing my plugin business, I always said no lifetime licensing. So it’s got to be yearly. You got to pay by year yearly because it needs to be sustainable of course, but you got to try stuff.
You got to try new ways to sell your products and you shouldn’t be afraid of doing it. Even if you have to just take it down sometime. It’s not a problem as long as you honor the customers that bought it on that licensing. And so what I’m seeing now that I’m selling plugins for some years now is that most of the customers that keep the licensing for a long time, they really just ask support for the first months. They really don’t need a lot of support afterwards. So even if I’m losing money on the long run with these customers that decide to buy the lifetime licensee, I think it’s just a way to give them both options and let them decide if they want to pay each year or if they want to pay a lifetime license. So I’m charging something between three and four times the price of yearly license for a lifetime. And so I decided to give them that option and let’s see how it goes. If it doesn’t go well, I can just turn off that licensing and just honor the ones that matters. It’s just a test. Yeah, I’m testing.
BobWP:
Interesting. Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever bought a lifetime license. I’ve been given a few over the years, which has been really nice and I’ve been given them and I’ve used them for maybe as long as a decade. I can probably count on one hand or two hands how many times I maybe ask for some little help with support or whatever because yeah, and I imagine there’s some that are a lot more high maintenance or whatever depending on things. With the one with bank, is there a lot of, I mean, not on the side of the actual woo, which yeah, it updates, you got update or whatever, but is there a lot of updates on the other side when you’re using kind of a payment gateway like that? Is there a lot of things you have to keep on top of? But is there stuff pretty much set? Like you said, they’ve been doing this what for 30 some years and it’s just done it .
Marco:
Exactly. No, it’s really stable what they have. So if then pay the company that the plugin works for, they are what is called by the Bank of Port a payment provider. They’re not a bank, they’re a proxy between the business owners and the banks. They’re certified by the Bank of Portugal authorized to provide payment services. And so multi-bank was not invented by them MB way. So the other methods, the other really use methods in Portugal is something that when you check out, you just enter your phone number, your mobile number, you get a push notification on your phone, you have that app installed and you say Yes, and it’s paid for done. And so they are not the owners of these payment matters. They are just payment providers. And so what we’ve been doing during the last years is they normally get another payment methods into their portfolio and we just need to add it to the plugin. So right now it’s multi-Bank, MB Way, there’s another one which is called Pay Shop, which is actually a way to pay with real money. So you just get the reference from the website and then you can go to a local shop, like a newspaper stand or something like that. And they have a computer there just given the reference and the money and it’s paid for.
BobWP:
Interesting. So is that, are they paying for it after they received something online or are they actually getting it there? There no,
Marco:
No. So just imagine you chose bank transfer on checkout, but instead of doing a real bank transfer and the shop owner has to go to check the balance on the bank to see if the payment is there or not, you just go to a shop or if it’s multi-bank or you just use the reference on the ATM or your own banking services, if it’s MB Way, you just say yes on the push notification on the phone. And if it’s the pay shop, the one with money, you just go to the shop next door, make the payment, and automatically in one second the website gets a web service call like an API call. And you are the changes to processing after that.
BobWP:
Interesting. Wow, that’s kind of cool. Alrighty. Well, okay, so products, we’ve talked about products, but knowing you, I’ve got to touch on community a bit, and you’ve been involved with meetups toward camps. Just tell us a little history of your community involvement then. I think a couple of things I might poke out there.
Marco:
So my first WordCamp in Porto in 2013, so maybe around two years after I start using WordPress, I found out about this community that some of us already start calling like a cult or more cult than a community. So I went to Porto in 2013. It was my first world camp and then I went to Seville for WordCamp Europe in 2015. That was my first WordCamp Europe. I start co-organizing in 2019 in Lisbon. And then I was part of the organization team of Europe 2020, the one that didn’t happen in portal because of the pandemic last year. I was crazy enough to become lead organizer of WordCamp Lisboa in 2023. It was hard. But yeah, I do it with pleasure and to give back to the community and the meetups in Lisbon, they were not happening for some time now, and the pandemic didn’t help also. But now we are in about almost a year and a half of nonstop meetups in Lisbon and it’s not only me right now, I have two other people helping me with organizing. So we meet every month in Lisbon, Brisbane, and then there’s the people of photo also. And I’m going there next month to speak
BobWP:
And I’ll be there about WooCommerce, I’ll be there heckling you and I will let out a secret about meetups in Portugal, meetups are only done for, they can have these long, long dinners right after the meetups. I think you said that once jokingly. Of course. But I did experience that. So you go to your hour meetup and then you have a two to three hour dinner.
Marco:
So come for the meetup, stay for the dinner.
BobWP:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
So last August here in Lisbon, António Carreira, a friend of mine which is also on the organizing team of the meetup, we are trying to get someone to speak on the August meetup. And it’s not easy because everybody’s on holiday that month. And so we told yeah, we just do the dinner.
BobWP:
Hey, why not?
Marco:
The meetup will be the dinner. It’s okay. You only need two people and a glass of beer to do it.
BobWP:
Yeah, exactly. So what is it that keeps driving you to do, I mean I know you with the community, you’re always out talking to people, you’re doing meetups, you’re doing the WordCamp, and I know it’s probably a question everybody’s been asked and a lot of us have the same answer, but what really drives you to stay involved with the community? I mean, you got the business understand that part, but actively giving your time. And I’ve seen you’ve done a lot of contributions through the different teams on WordPress. What drives you to do that?
Marco:
Yeah, it’s really the sense of community. I don’t think most of the people that work in it and in development understands how special this community is. Of course with all these it’s problems and dramas that we have some time, it really is something that I’ve never seen in other areas of it. And so yeah, it’s the people, it’s the community, it’s giving back to a software. So 100% of the revenue at my place in my house, it’s word for us. Me and my wife, we work 100% of the day with word for us, so why not give back?
BobWP:
Yeah, really as simple as that, right?
Marco:
Yeah, it is really simple. Also, being with the people, everybody works from home now since the pandemic. I work from home for 15 years now. I need to see people. So I need to go to meetups and work camps and stuff like that. And that’s a way to be connected with the world. So for instance, as I was saying, I was part of the organizing team for WordCamp Europe 2020 in Porto. That only happened in 2022 that year a crazy American come to Porto and decided to stay. And then I was invited to be on the organizing team for the online version. That did happen. I was really glad to help, but it’s just not the same.
BobWP:
Yeah, I attended a couple online ones during that time and I just thought, yeah, there’s no comparison.
Marco:
Exactly.
BobWP:
Absolutely. Well my friend, this was wonderful. I don’t get a chance to chat with a lot of people. I let my host do all that good stuff, but I’m glad I was able to sit down with you and catch up and I’ll be seeing you in a short amount of time here in Porto at the meetup and looking forward to that. And that nice little bite to eat we’ll have afterwards.
Marco:
Yes, we always have that really cool dinner with all the people. As we were saying, it’s about the community, it’s about the people.
BobWP:
Yeah, exactly. So where can people find you? Give me your website addresses, all your social, where you hang out in social and stuff where people can connect with you.
Marco:
Okay, so myself, you can find me on Twitter, that X thing, I’m still wearing a Twitter shirt. People are not seeing this because it’s only audio. But yeah, my handle is Wonderm00n, but the last two ohs are zeros. And then you can find my company webdadospt and you can find my plugins brand. So I started selling the plugins and they’re the same brand as the company and then I decided to separate them. And you can find me at our plugins @ptwooplugins.
BobWP:
Alright, well absolutely a pleasure my friend, and looking forward to seeing you soon. It
Marco:
Was an honor. Thank you.
BobWP:
You bet. Thank you.
Marco:
Okay Bob. See you.
BobWP:
Bye.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: The Collaboration of the Interactivity API with WordPress and WooCommerce

In this episode of Inside Woo, BobWP chats with WordPress and WooCommerce developers Carlos Bravo and Lucio Giannotta about the collaboration between WordPress core and Woo working with the Interactivity API, a new framework for WordPress developers.

The API allows developers to create interactive blocks, providing consistency across the platform. It also solves the issue of front-end development in WordPress, which previously depended on individual developers or teams. The Interactivity API allows all developers to use the same tools, enabling plugins to be interconnected and share the same code base. The experts also highlighted the API’s benefits for WooCommerce, including improved user experience, server-side rendering of content, and more consistent, cleaner code.

  • Take a deep dive into what the Interactivity API
  • Learn the problems it solves for the WordPress community and WooCommerce ecosytem
  • Discover what types of blocks are powered by it in Woo
  • Find out the hardest part was in developing the API
  • Hear what the WordPress core team learned from collaboration with Woo
  • Understand the implementation of the Interactivity API and it’s effect performance, accessibility, security and other aspects of Woo
  • Learn about the ways that it facilitates custom block development and creativity for developers building unique WooCommerce experiences.

Lucio on LinkedIn

Carlos on LinkedIn


Show Transcript

BobWP:
As you know, you’ve been hearing a lot about the Interactivity API probably heard it on other podcasts. You’ve heard it on different posts around the space. And we’re going to throw in some woo with this one because everybody’s been talking about WordPress, but we’re going to talk about WordPress and Woo and I have two experts on the topic. Way more experts on it than me by 100% Lucio and Carlos joining me, how are you two today?

Lucio:
Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Carlos:
Hi, I am really happy to be here.

BobWP:
Alrighty, well let’s get right into this. You’re just going to have a conversation, so we need to start with the basics. What is the Interactivity API?

Carlos:
The Interactivity API is a new framework for WordPress developers that allows them to write interactive blocks. Those are blocks that the user can click and something will happen on the site. And it does in a way that is the same way for every developer. We are trying to give consistency by writing some data attributes in the HTML that will be together with some JavaScript and will allow developers to create interactive blocks. That’s the main goal of the API to give consistency.

BobWP:
Yeah. So from both of you, what is the solving for the community? What is this solving for the developer community or even the community as a whole?

Carlos:
Regarding WordPress right now, the main problem in the community, it’s not a problem in the community, it’s problem in the software is that there is no guides about how to do the front end part in your WordPress site. I mean each project will depend on each developer or team working on it. Until now, you could use React, you could use plain javascript, any framework, but now you can also do that. But we are providing a way to do all, so all developers can use the same tools. And that’s great because that way we allow plugins to be interconnected. Like blocks can talk to other playing blocks, and also they are all using the same JavaScript library. So imagine you have to plugins one for bookings and one for the dealing with the payment process. For example, with this new API, they can both share the same code base instead of using one React and the other plain JavaScript or whatever library can use. That’s the main problem we wanted to solve here.

Lucio:
Right. So as per what concerns, Woo, I think a lot of what Carlos has just said applies. So if you think about traditionally how W has handled this kind of interactive well content in the shops, if you’re a developer, you know that, well, two things. I think first of all that Woo has somewhat fallen behind the curve of the modern e-commerce experience in a way. And the other you will know that sometimes the developer experience of adding such Interactivity to a shop was a bit inconsistent. So had traditionally we had things like just normal jQuery Ajax requests all sprinkled around various functionality like the add to cart functionality for example. So we had very kind of the first inkling of an Interactivity was that back, I dunno, more than when Woo started really that was there as well. But then when we started to get integrated a little bit more with Gutenberg blocks and start transitioning into a more block based paradigm, well frankly because of Gutenberg also was very young and Wu was an early adopter like we are of data Interactivity API.

Now there was no clear direction. So everybody was developing blocks was kind of on their own. And the same applies to Woo. So we started developing blocks using React. Well that resulted in well us trying to move as fast as possible to implement this kind of experiences, but it resulted in a little bit of an inconsistent experience. So now we want to transition all our bets away from the classic themes as you are aware and more into block-based development. And there are a few downsides of the way we were developing blocks because again, we were in the early stages and we were experimenting. First of all, I would say I think the clearest downside was that our new blocks, for instance, if you have used the old products block, they were climb side rendered. That means that when the user will go to the page, JavaScript will need to load and then it would show a loading skeleton and then it’ll show the products.

That would mean that well search engines nowadays can deal a little bit better with client side engine stuff, but it was not the best SEO and it was definitely not the best UX As you are going to the store and you know how precious those milliseconds are. You want to see your products as soon as possible. You don’t want to see another loading indicator. So I think first of all, the Interactivity API allows us to do the server side rendering of all this content, which means that the server already renders the content that we have. And so the user sees it immediately and then on top of it add with, what’s it called? Hydration systems that Interactivity API is providing add the Interactivity in short. So before we had the situation in which classic teams would be service-side rendered, but then let’s say you want to switch pages in your catalog and then you get a full page reload, that’s not great experience.

Then we wanted to do something a little bit more. So we had this client side navigations that was more snappy. But the problem is a CO and the problem is just user experience on first load for example. And now we have the best of both words thanks to Interactivity API, right? We service edge render. So that’s means the crawlers can find the contents very easily. You get it immediately without any flashing of content and also you get the Interactivity. So I would say there is a clear improvement for the user experience of WordPress users and merchants to get aligned more into what modern e-commerce platform, what you would expect from a modern e-commerce platform. So that’s I think the best contribution of the Interactivity API and the WooCommerce ecosystem. But to the ecosystem at large, you can also say there is a few more developer oriented improvements that have been made thanks to the work that the in interactive API guys have done, which is, well first of all, by using their framework, we remove a lot of low level plumbing kind of coding.

In this way it means that the responsibility is handled by the framework. We don’t have to worry and it means that WooCommerce code base is more consistent, it’s cleaner, frankly, and we can rely on the expertise of the entire WordPress ecosystem to support us because we are using their framework. And so we also are able to things just much faster and they are more maintainable and they are more secure and reliable. And also wherever is building on WooCommerce, you’re not going to have this fragmentation of the whole ecosystem that everybody’s doing something a little bit differently. So we have all the same framework now and yeah, like Carbo said, you can still implement things like you wanted, right? But now we have a common ground where we all built and that means greater versatility. For example, developers can jump from one place of the code base or another or maybe build the extra blocks that are going to be shared among and across the community and the ecosystem and so on. So I would say these are just a few of the good things coming from the Interactivity API to WooCommerce. It’s truly something magical.

BobWP:
I actually took this a little different approach because listeners are probably thinking, wow, these two really know what they’re talking about. So I’m going to step back and have you introduce yourself, who you are, what you’re doing with this project, what your experience and what has been your involvement with this so far. I’ll start with Carlos.

Carlos:
Cool. Well my name is Carlos. I’ve been working as a full-time sponsor contributor of WordPress score for about two years and a half. Before that, I was working doing projects for another companies as a freelance and also as an agency developer. These last two years and a half, I’ve been full-time working in Interactivity, API, planning it, talking with another developers, starting working on the foundations of the API, doing lots of testings, lots of proof of concepts, lots of investigation, comparing with another frameworks, a lot of stuff working on that. And I will keep working on the Interactivity as long as the community needs it. I mean, I’m quite happy to be there. I remember one sentence that was when I joined them, it was like, do you want to help to do the frontend developers of 40% of the web? And it was like, yes, for sure.

BobWP:
And Lucio, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lucio:
Sure, my name is LuLucio and where to start? Well, I’ve, let’s start with my involvement with WordPress. I’ve been involved with the WordPress community since the early days of my development career. So it’s been more than 15 years. I think at this point. I think many of us developers have started somehow with juggling around things and playing with WordPress. It provided a really good platform and still does for starting out as a developer. Then I went on a long WordPress hiatus for several years. I didn’t touch any WordPress code. I started working on more AI automation related stuff actually.

And then about same as Carlos, I think two years a half ago I got more involved into this and I’m now working for Automattic. I work for WooCommerce division and I lead a small team there who is responsible for everything which we call full store editing, which is our version of the full site editing that WordPress says. So we are really trying to spearhead very hard the transition, like I said before from the classic paradigm to the blocks paradigm. So we want to empower users and merchants specifically to customize their stores, to have their vision come to life. And we really think that the work which has been done in core and Gutenberg is the best way to go. And I think over the past two years and a half, I’ve seen so much progress in WooCommerce that I hardly can believe it actually, I’m trying to be objective here, not to be too biased, but I think it’s been incredible the amount of maturity that we have seen in the past and a half years. And we are basically not only willing, but we are committed to try to make this transition as seamless as possible for the users and just to get everybody excited about what blocks mean in the WooCommerce and leave our legacy classic paradigms behind. So that’s a little bit about my mission, let’s say.

BobWP:
So what has been, you’ve both been involved with this for a while. What do you consider really the hardest part? What’s been the biggest challenge of actually the development of the Interactivity A p? I mean, is there anything specifically you can think of or something even more general?

Carlos:
When we started investigating the best approach to deal with the problems we had before, I mean the first thing you do is to compare with another React frameworks providing the same Interactivity and the single page applications period. And most of them next swell kits, they are using the same language both in the server and the client. But WordPress is not like that. WordPress is built on PHP. That was the most difficult part to work with because as Lucio commented before, you need to be server side compatible. That was the most important part. And in WordPress there are hooks and those hooks are really powerful, but also allows third party plugins and developers to modify the HTML as they want. And that is a thing that is quite hard for new Java screen modern frameworks because most of them are working to only change the data that the user interacts to.

If you have a counter and you increase it, you only want to update the number for a product. If you want to add two pair of CT’s, I mean the number is the only part of that HTML that should be updated. The problem here is that when you compare what it comes from the server to what you have in the client, if those are different at the beginning you’ll see a flash on the side as a user or you need a loading bar as Lucia mentioned. So dealing with those hooks was the hardest part and to be fully compatible with all plugins backward compatible.

Also with block and classic themes and with anyone editing that HTML, the way to go we found was this directives thing. I dunno if we talked about directives before, but for people who are new to the Interactivity API, these directives are the core foundation of the Interactivity API. These are like HTML attributes. If you take alpine js that is quite common similar or for example HTMX that is also quite new and it’s approaching a similar way to do these things. We are adding attributes to that HTML to allow both the server and the client to know what to do with those user interactions. Imagine on click for example or text update or changing CSS classes or styles. That was for my point of view, the hardest part to deal with.

Lucio:
Yeah, well I just want to echo what you said. Basically for us it’s also mostly the difference between the server side language and the front end language, which is I think a problem that still we have to kind of figure out a final solution if there will ever be a final solution, like a paradigm or sorts. Because obviously the advantage of having the single page applications of paradigm that we had before with the React components was that we only needed to care about the React code base, but now we have to maintain the same component in PHP and in JavaScript or TypeScript in our case.

So that creates additional complexity for sure. It’s totally worth it, don’t get me wrong. But still I think that on my wishlist is a way to better handle this component reusability, try to eliminate this duplication of code and try to make sure that the component is in sync to make it more maintainable. And I think we don’t have a solution yet. And I don’t know, I also don’t know what the solution could be. I also know that we are not exactly the only one who faced this. If you think about Laravel has had similar problems because also they are PHP framework and they use view in the front end. But Laravel has different set of constraints or rather we have much more stricter constraints than Laravel. I know that something that, if I recall correctly, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong here. I recall when I was checking on Laravel did it, is that they actually have a node emulator running on PHP to do the rendering or something of that sort, which I think we can’t do.

I was speaking with Lucio I think a couple of some months ago. I think we can’t do because we need to support all their versions of PHP and this is only a PHP eight thing or something like that. So obviously this is a problem that’s really hard for us because WordPress is deeply committed to backwards compatibility. So moving towards these kind of things is much harder. But the upside is that people can rely on us for future years, right? So yes, I would definitely say that for us as implementer of blocks on top of the Interactivity API rather than implementing the API itself, this was the hardest challenge. Trying to figure out how to optimize for removing as much as possible code duplication and using the components and making sense on how to architecture our code.

Carlos:
Yeah, it’s also on my wishlist. I would love in the future to see the Interactivity P in the editor in order not to do the react block for the editor and then the front end or the PHP plus the Interactivity API block for the front end. That would be cool. Yeah, we have been thinking in that. But as you mentioned, backward compatibility is a thing. If WordPress, we have to deal, I mean it’s a good thing to have this backward compatibility as you mentioned, if you have a WordPress site, it will work for years, but still you need to update it please and this cover for security. But we have been thinking about it. We have several options there like working on a templating system or we are still thinking about it. We are also on the front end we use, which is a lightweight kind of version of React.

There have been some people asking us to move react to the editor part in order to be lightweight. But still there’s a lot of work to do there. There’s a lot of things to stay there. We have some options. We are just making tests, but still it’s going to take some time because I mean WordPress is evolving quite a lot. We are also phase three with this collaborative workflow, the internationalization. I mean that part is, I mean we will receive more feedback of that kind of, I don’t want to repeat lots. We are working on that. We know we suffer from the same.

Lucio:
I actually wanted to, you made me think about something I wanted to add to my previous answer, although I made it clear that it was just a limited set of advantages that I was talking about. But now you mentioned shipping React instead of react is also another thing that I think it’s particularly important for e-commerce experiences. To make it clear, we haven’t moved away from React yet, but it would be beneficial for performance reasons, obviously to ship the lightweight, the most lightweight code that we can. And also connecting to what you said about the directives and what I was talking about with removing a lot of the plumbing, for instance, state management, which is something very usually very complex and that everybody even in the same team sometimes tends to do in a little bit different way. Let’s not talk about different plugins in the ecosystem. I think that by abstracting the state management, the Interactivity API, this also is a huge advantage. These are my personal feelings of working with that. So take that with grain of salt.

BobWP:
So you talked about performance, which is obviously talked about quite a bit here. Anything else as far as impact on performance you’d like to point out or are there other impacts, say accessibility that you want us to be aware of?

Lucio:
Well, just what I mentioned is a tiny part of the performance impact that this has. Mostly, it ties in with what I was saying before, that the most important positive performance impact is the fact that everything is service side rendered. So users will see content mature, maybe have been exposed to those metrics as first paint and such metrics. These are just much faster. So not only performance is going to be faster because their browser doesn’t need to ship a bunch of JavaScript, then it needs to evaluate, then it needs to render the JavaScript and so on. But it’s also just including all the content needs to be rendered and it’s also perceived performance that matters a lot in these kind of scenarios. So instead of seeing a loading indicator, you see the content coming up immediately or like Carlos was saying, you don’t see the flesh of stale content and then everything is, it should be.

That’s I think as I was saying before, the best of both worlds between basic service-side rendered stuff, which is the classic, the real classic legacy kind of approach and the single page application that enables this more snappier interactions. So we get the best of both of those. As for all impacts like maybe accessibility, I mean you render HTML, so I guess it’s compatible much out of the box with most screen readers and things like that. We have big commitment on accessibility In any case, I know core even is even more diligent than we are most of the time. So I dunno, do you have stuff to add, Carlos?

Carlos:
Yeah, regarding accessibility, we already did accessibility improvements to some core blocks with Interactive DPA like search and navigation. Cause it is much easier to work with keyboard Evan, for example. So now the navigation keyboard experience is much better than it was before. And also as we are editing the HTML, both in client with Interactivity API runtime and in the server with also using the attack processor, the new H TML processor, we are adding some area labels or indicators for screen readers and keyboard navigating for the sites. So it will be still a matter that the playing developer needs to work with. I mean we can provide the tools but we cannot help you with your plugin or make your plugin to be accessible. But we are providing a tool that will allow you to add those markup, those thermal attributes that you need to have a better experience for those people. But it’s that the main point is that we already improved some accessibility. For example, also with the new image Lightbox feature accessibility was quite important for us and we spend a lot of time working on that and this API allow us to be able to handle that expand experience for example with the keyboard. And I think that’s all the rest of you mentioned is great.

BobWP:
Very cool. So did the team at WordPress core learn anything through this collaboration working with Woo?

Carlos:
Yes, for sure. We learn a lot of Woo. I mean when you start thinking about how to make a framework for developers, I mean the first thing we thought was, okay, let’s talk to them. Let’s talk to real developers. Because a problem for core developers may be that if you are all your time working only in core, you are only working with WordPress with nothing like a default WordPress installation with just one post, just one page gut number install and just that. And the problems usually appear when you need more difficult things. I mean, for example, our blocks to test was navigation search file and the most difficult was the query loop. But now you can change the pagination, you can paginate your posts without reloading the site. But the first time we talked with Woo, it was like, okay, how do you use it for the product collection, for product filter or for an add car button, which is more interactive than an e-commerce.

I mean WooCommerce was the best fit we could find at the beginning of the project. For example, there’s one directive that at the beginning where we were not planning on including it because we were not sure about if it would be necessary at the beginning of the Interactivity API life that was WP it that is used to render loops of things. And when we presented to Woo, the first thing they said was we need an each directive. And it was like, okay, we thought about that but we were not sure. And if you are telling us to do it like now the first or the second one, yes, go for it. And also they were the first giving us the real feedback and also giving us the main pain points that Lucio told before we are dealing with this issue. We have this problem using React on the front end. We are have this loading bar that we don’t really like and that’s it. We have had a lot of conversations with them. Their help has been great and also where they were, I think the biggest guinea pig we’ve ever had in a project because I mean Woo is in a lot of sites, woo is a really huge project and they even found the time to help us with the foundation of the API. I think without wool this project would’ve not been the same. Would’ve been different for sure, would’ve been worse.

Lucio:
That’s great to hear. And I want to make it clear that we were extremely happy and honored to be the Guinea pig project and we have also maybe people are wondering how we’re talking about how did we use this since it’s not out for official use yet. So actually we did something quite really experimental and crazy in our WooCommerce code base. We have included our own forked version of the Interactivity API runtime while it was still in flux and in development. And we still do that actually right now. So the way we have done this collaboration and provided the feedback that Carlos has mentioned it because we literally copied their homework with their permission and just pasted the Interactivity API runtime into the WOO code base. And that has allowed us to kind of really be there while the development of the API was going on with hands-on, of course everybody in the community could participate obviously, but to have such a big buy-in from us, it was very important from us that this would work. So we had a lot of involvement with ecosystem as Carlos has mentioned, providing feedback but also providing contributions and so on. So that was a really amazing collaboration, which makes me think really, I’m really optimistic about the future with the blocks and the Golden instantiation of Gutenberg in WooCommerce. Basically

BobWP:
With what you’ve said there and kind of moving forward, what ways does this facilitate custom block development helping woo developers get more creative in building the future woo experiences? I mean is there other things you haven’t mentioned or things that you would like to talk to those developers specifically and say this is now the opportunities you have or will have?

Lucio:
Well I think most of the things I have mentioned in passing at least I would say the biggest deal is basically removing the responsibility of this plumbing that I was talking about from the hands of the single developers and enabling them to build experiences instead of thinking about how to deal with state management hydration now what’s the best paradigm to use for templating and ding and all these sort of things that Interactivity API does for us. So removing the heavy lifting from the developers and also creating a base, like I was mentioning before, a shared understanding across the entire ecosystem. Not only WooCommerce but WordPress Gutenberg. So we know that our blocks are going to interactive blocks, this is the way they’re going to work moving forward. This creates also a lot of future proof to your custom blocks for example.

So you can be faster, just more rapid development of this kind of dynamic components. You can be more future proof, you can get inspired by what’s going on in Gutenberg. You can see, actually one thing that we did again copying course homework is our product collection block that is soon hopefully coming out of beta is based on the query loop block that was done on Gutenberg. So at first actually we’re using a variation of the block and then we realized we couldn’t really use a variation, but we took a lot of inspiration from the work that very smart people have done on the query loop block on the navigation, on the gotchas of what kind of blocks you can put inside. There is a lot of stuff that we have taken inspiration from the work that’s going on in Gutenberg. So I would say these points maybe are a good answer to your question.

BobWP:
Well I know that listeners probably as they get through this show, they come up with questions and I actually did have a listener when they found out that I would be talking to you too, did ask a question around security. So I thought I would at least throw it out to you and I’m going to read it here. Verbatim said the proposal blog post mentioned security and their graphic as partially handled. He says he doesn’t have a lot of react knowledge, so he’d like to know more information on that. For example, is this the end of nonsense?

Carlos:
We are not ending nonsense. I mean nonces are still there. We’ll be still there because it’s a great way to deal with intercommunication between the user and the site or saving data in the system. From there, I mean the most easily in the site, the most dangerous part is forms is allowing user input from outside that can be injected to your site or server site to your database. But what we mentioned there is we are providing a framework to create interactive blocks. So they will be secure, our directives are secure, the run time is also secure. The PHP server processing of all of that, because we are in PP is also processing those directives in the server. If you want to show a taps panel for example, and also the first step for product descriptions or productization data, all that part, if it is handled by the PHP with our Interactivity API will be secure.

But also we are allowing the user to use their own JavaScript. I mean you will have a VJS file in order to write that interactions you want the blog to have and that java script will be written by the developer. So that’s the partial handle. I mean we deal with one part that is the API and the directive processing and the runtime that make that interaction. But the other part is handled by the own developer. So we cannot control that. I mean WordPress is secure. Yes, we try to be secure as always, but you as supply developer, you cannot, you need also to your clients to be secure.

BobWP:
Alrighty, cool. Well I’m sure that was the answer he was hoping for. So getting towards the end here, is there something that we haven’t touched on? I’m sure there’s a lot of things we haven’t touched on, but anything specifically from either of you or both of you that you’d like to add?

Lucio:
Yeah, actually, I mean as you said, there is probably a treasure trove of things to touch upon. I’m very proud of saying that we have been experimenting with a lot of new things. And so people who have been following WooCommerce quite closely, they might have seen also a little bit of a mess maybe sometimes as we have included the new products beta and then it became the new products beta block was supposed to replace the old products block and now we have a new block which is the product collection block, which is supposed to replace the product’s beta. And maybe some people have questions about why we did this and I would say sorry, but not sorry. Also we have been experimenting and being a little bit more liberal. That’s why we for the first time introduced beta label on our blocks because we felt like we wanted to be a little bit more out there and experiment with this new API and make sure that we could move a bit faster than our usual commitment to backwards compatibility and so on. So I think one of the most exciting parts that we are implementing is this new way of displaying your shops catalog, which I guess is the core, the heart of the e-commerce.

So now you can display your products using this new product collection beta, which is hopefully coming out of beta in the next, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t say anything but soon tm. And so you will have all the advantages like I was mentioning before of service side rendering. So it’s very snappy, instant rendering and also incredible interaction and Interactivity like pagination and so on. And we are also in parallel developing the new filters block. So previously we were in this limbo zone. Well, in a classic experience, you select a filter in the whole page, reloads in a react experience, you select a filter and the block reloads. But there was a bunch of limitations about doing that that I’m not going to get into because it’s going to get a little bit too tedious. But now we are implementing this new filters block which will seamlessly integrate with the product collection and everywhere you can have multiple product collection blocks in your site and have different filters assigned to them and everything is going to be very fast in reloading and now people expect from the modern e-commerce experiences.

So this is I think one of the core things that we are working on, but there is much more, like for example, developers might be happy to know that we are moving away from our jQuery ways. So actually the first Guinea pig of the Interactivity API was the add to cart button, which still used jQuery in factories. I dunno how many people know this. There’s a little setting in WooCommerce in the WooCommerce preferences that you can toggle if you don’t want Ajax to happen on the clicking of the add to cart button. That’s probably a setting that came out, I don’t know, maybe 12 years ago. I don’t even know why that’s setting why anybody would toggle that setting. But we still keep that setting by the way, we didn’t remove it, but we have transitioned the jQuery way into Interactivity API. So the add to cart works with Interactivity API and then we are doing things like the product gallery that eventually maybe, we’ll thinking as I was saying before, to take inspiration from Gutenberg, we are thinking of perhaps trying to transition into the more light box behavior that Carlos was mentioning that Gutenberg is implementing right now.

It’s not the API is not quite there for us yet, so we are doing other things, but eventually maybe the idea would be to once again try to leverage as much Gutenberg as we can. So we want to be to set out the example for the community that Gutenberg is really a solid framework that you can build the most complex use cases upon, which I think e-commerce is probably one of the most complexes and we have many other things down the line. You can imagine tabbed experiences in your single product template, a collapsible maybe your so many things on the roadmap. Imagination is the limit, let’s say. So I just wanted to give a little bit of sneak peek for people who haven’t used this new blocks you should get into them, try using the product collection. The new filters beta give us feedback. We are really keen, especially in this phase, to get as much feedback as possible. I know actually data that product collection is being used and it’s on the rise and that makes me extremely happy. I can’t wait for basically every e-commerce WooCommerce experience to be a block expert. So that’s my mission as I mentioned earlier.

BobWP:
Do you have anything we’ve left out, Carlos, that you’d like to add, that you like to highlight?

Carlos:
I would like to highlight that the Interactivity API is stable. Okay. You can use it without hesitation. It was included in a private way also in 6.4 in the previous version of WordPress. And the navigation block, as I mentioned before, navigation, search file and query, and this light box feature that was included on the last version of 6.4 in WordPress were all powered by this Interactivity API that will now in 6.5 will be public.

BobWP:
Alright, great. Now for those developers out there that want to follow all the things that are going on with it and possibly propose suggestions to the roadmap or offer use cases or whatever, how can they do that?

Carlos:
I think Gutenberg repository is the best place to go. If you have any issue or a problem, then create an issue and let us know. You can ping Luis, David or me in Gutenberg and we will be happy to answer. And also there’s a panel there in GitHub called GitHub Discussions and there’s a bar just for the Interactivity. PI like attack for discussions where you can talk about it suggest improvements, you can also showcase your blocks or your projects and those are the main points. We also are in Slack, so feel free to reach out in coordinator Slack channel, and I dunno, maybe Twitter, well now colleagues, but some of us are there looking for Interactivity word, but the best place to discuss apart from make core posts. Also in the comments of core posts that are talking about the Interactivity PI think GitHub is the best place to go. GitHub and GitHub discussions

Lucio:
For our developments. You can always follow developers to know what we’re thinking about our roadmaps. We post design snaps very frequently. Kudos to the people involved in that. Our community Slack is also available and we are also on GitHub as well. But I think for Woo, you should keep an eye on developers woo.com and give us feedback on the repo and also on Slack. Ping us and give us feedback on the way you’re using the blogs on the limitations that you’re seeing. It’s similar to what Carlos was saying about Gutenberg working in a vacuum. Sometimes when we develop for e-commerce, we don’t know all the ins and outs of people’s businesses and what their needs are. So maybe we think we have covered all of them, but there are some niche, or even maybe not so niche, but things that just fly under our radar that people can just ping about. So ping to us about. So ping us the limitations that you find with the new blocks we are experimenting with. We are really, really hungry for feedback.

BobWP:
Very cool. So I just want to thank you both for taking the time. I know this is a hot topic right now. A lot of people are interested in it and hopefully we’ll get people in there asking all sorts of questions and also contributing and helping along the way. So again, thank you both for being on

Lucio:
Anytime. Thanks for having us

Carlos:
Anytime. Happy to be here.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

Do The Woo Community: Hear From 13 WordCamp Asia 2024 Speakers

  • Adam Silverstein discusses the importance of user experience over the entire page life, not just the loading part.
  • Alex Kirk talks about a tool that allows translators to run a plugin or theme in the WordPress playground.
  • Benjamin Intal shares tips on using the site editor to transform the default 2024 theme.
  • Hannah Swain Løvik discusses the concept of “Joy of Missing Out” and focusing on meaningful tasks.
  • Joe Simpson Jr. will present on making all WordPress events accessible.
  • Miriam Schwab shares her experience of building her WordPress career while raising seven children.
  • Paolo Belcastro will present on using AI to improve content creation.
  • Ricky Blacker talks about the importance of website accessibility.
  • Jeanne Tan will discuss on-page SEO techniques, highlighting how the order of words in a sentence can affect Google rankings.
  • Robert Li will give an overview of generative AI and a demo of a chatbot.
  • Wes Theron discusses the creation of learning pathways on WordPress.
  • Perth Woratana Ngarmtrakulchol will share how he monetized his WordPress development skills to create multiple income streams.
  • Nada ElSharkawy will share her experience of starting a WordPress Meetup.

Show Transcript

Adam Silverstein:
Hi, this is Adam and my talk for WordCamp. Asia is INPA new metric for interactivity. One tip for my talk. When you’re building a product or site and aiming for good user experience metrics, you need to consider user experience over the entire page life, not just the loading part, because user spend over 90% of their time on web pages after they load. So I invite you to attend my session to learn all about the new core web vital metric that helps you do just that. Interaction to next Paint or INP.
Alex Kirk:
Hi, my name is Alex Kirk and my lightning talk is called Translate Live in Context Translation using WordPress Playground. I’m going to talk about this tool on translate WordPress dot org that allows translators to run a plugin or theme in the WordPress playground alongside with a special version of Glotpress called Local Glotpress that adds inline translation capabilities. It’ll highlight text that can be or is already translated with a color shadow and translators can more easily find a good and fitting translation. Having the visual context of where the text appears allows them to easily make the right call of whether that text is a headline or a button. The tool is also useful for plugin creators as they can quickly switch between different language versions of their plugin to see how well it is translated. And here’s my tip for plugin creators. Make use of the new blueprint plugin preview functionality of the plugin directory. The blueprint that you provide there will also be used by translate live so that your translators don’t need to spend time configuring your plugin but can start translating right away. Thanks and see you at my talk.
Benjamin Intal:
Hi, I’m Benjamin Intal. I’m the founder and lead developer of Stackable Pagebuilder Blocks for WordPress. Here’s my tip that I’d like to share with you. The default 2024 theme is a chameleon and you can mostly transform it to anything you’d like. Using the site editor is key here. It’s your headed editor, photo editor, and template editor. You can use it to build completely bespoke templates, blog or archive pages to showcase portfolios or your bestsellers. Even the static pages like your 404 page you can fully build. Unlike before in the old days. There are a lot of innovations taking place in the block space, especially in the site editor, so if you haven’t checked it out for a long time now, try it out again. It may simplify a lot of your current block-based workflows. Join me in going more in depth on this topic. I’ll be sharing more workflow and efficiency tips on my session in WordCamp Asia titled How to Achieve an Efficient Workflow with a Block Editor Insight Editor. It’ll be on March 9, track three at 3:00 PM. See you there.
Hannah Swain Løvik:
Hi there. My name is Hannah Swain Løvik and I’ll be at WordCamp Asia giving a lightning talk on From FOMO to JOMO. Discovering the joy of missing out our lives are relatively short. One popular book says that we have about 4,000 weeks if you live to be 80 years old. The emphasis is then often on using our time as efficiently as we possibly can. That generally involves productivity methods. After all, the more productive you can be, the more efficient you can be, right? The problem is that no matter how efficient you are, that time will just fill up with more work. No matter how many times you empty your inbox, it’s just going to fill up again. Instead, think about what you really want to achieve, what is truly meaningful for you in these 4,000 weeks. Then do that, not the busy work of emptying your unending inbox. I know that’s easier said than done, recognizing that you’re operating from a checkbox mentality of just getting things done rather than thinking about what you truly want to achieve. That’s a first step. I’ll be happy to tell you more about this at my session at WordCamp Asia. I’m looking forward to meeting you there.
Joe Simpson Jr.:
Hello, my name is Joe A. Simpson Jr. And I’ll be presenting Make All WordPress events accessible at WordCamp Asia 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan. I am so incredibly excited and honored to be presenting. I’ll be joining you from cast California just north of Los Angeles in the beautiful Santa Clarita Valley. Often when we think of WordPress and accessibility, we think of websites, not the physical or virtual spaces where we gather. In this presentation, I’m going to show you the community, how we can make all of our events as open and inclusive and accessible as possible. We’ll take a look at the history of accessibility in terms of the built world and how a group of teenagers who met at a summer camp made a movement that changed the world forever. I’ll share tips on how to plan accessible events. For example, what do you look for when you’re touring a venue?
Are you touring that venue with someone that’s disabled? I’ll also share a checklist on what to look for. We’ll also look at how to build organizing teams with an eye out for accessibility. We’ll talk about how to create welcome and meaning spaces, how to make wayfinding maps and other information to help people get around the venue and come and pass as easily as possible. I’ll show you tips on how to make your website and all of your communications as accessible as possible. I’ll give you tips also on how to make your live stream accessible. My presentations are always interactive. I love the give take between me and the audience. I’d love to hear what accessibility wins you have to offer and so we can have a great dialogue on how to move accessibility forward in our community. Join me, Joe Simpson, March 8th, 2:00 PM CST at WordCamp Asia. I’m so excited to see you and can’t wait to meet you.
Miriam Schwab:
Hi, my name is Miriam Schwab and I’m head of WordPress relations at elementary. I’m going to be speaking at WordCamp Asia in Taipei on the topic of How I Built my WordPress Career while Raising Seven Children. This is going to be quite a personal talk for me. I have mentioned here and there that I’m a mother of seven, but I haven’t really ever delved into it, at least not in a public setting, what it means and how I managed to more or less juggle a very intense and demanding personal life with a very intense and demanding career. Actually, because I founded two WordPress companies, first my agency and then Strati and sold both of them and building and developing a company and products is incredibly demanding, and of course raising seven children is also incredibly demanding. So in my talk, I’m going to be addressing certain techniques and processes that I developed over the years that helped me be more efficient and manage these two aspects of my life.
And also I am going to touch on why WordPress is a really great option for people who have demanding person lives and or just want to be able to give attention to their friends and family in the way that they need and deserve. That’s more or less what the talk is going to cover. It’s a very unique perspective, and I’m not going to be speaking from the angle of this is what anyone should do. Not at all, but we all have our professional side to our lives and we all have our personal side, and it can look many different ways, but I think it’s a challenge for most of us to figure that out. And so hopefully some of the things that I learned doing what I did under very intense circumstances can be helpful to whoever attends my talk. So I hope you’ll come and listen and of course, I love it when people ask me questions. I’m not always going to have an answer to everything because some things just are hard to explain, but I love having a conversation about a lot of things and I’d love to talk to you about this topic. So I hope I’ll see you there and I can’t wait to see you in Taipei at WordCamp Asia.
Paolo Belcastro:
Hey everyone. Paolo Belcastro here, hailing from Vienna, Austria. I’m incredibly excited to join you all in Taipei in March for Work, campe. I will be presenting their recession with the title You’ll Never Be Alone Anymore, Building and Maintaining Work Sites With AI. I will go over all the different ways that AI can be used to improve your craft as a content creator and a site creator, and particularly underline the benefit of using it as a tool to increase the diversity of opinions you consider when writing content. The idea is to use AI to become better at what we do and increase the quality of our content as opposed to the quantity of it. I am truly, truly looking forward to seeing you all there and invite you to come and meet me at 3:00 PM on March eight, for you’ll Never Be Alone Anymore, Building and Maintaining WordPress Sites with AI.
Ricky Blacker:
Hi, my name’s Ricky Blacker and I am going to be doing a talk at WordCamp Asia 2024 this year, and I’m talking about accessibility and the why, the when and how. So in my talk, I’m going to be sharing a lot of things from my perspective on why this is important and how to go about it. One of the interesting things with it is a time in my life where I really found out about this when I was designing WooCommerce sites and I found accessibility is one of the big things. It’s more than just allowing people to see with disabilities, allowing them to interact with websites. It goes way beyond that. It’s all about everyone being able to access the information on the website and little things like adding the alt tags on your pictures. This is not just for screen readers and or if the image can’t be seen.
This is something that can be picked up by SEO and can really boost your SEO, making sure that those alt tags are properly inserted. Even beyond that. When I was doing the commerce sites, one of the things I found was that even the simple thing is renaming the file name to something descriptive about the picture was massively helpful. And this is accessibility on an even deeper level because I was finding, I was going back and looking for images that I’d maybe uploaded a year or two before and I had a hell of a time finding it because they were labeled things like Image 2000149, and if you’re going back and looking for that image, it’s very hard not knowing what it’s called. So I started labeling even my file names before I uploaded anything into the WordPress media file. I would rename them with something meaningful so it was easy to go back and find them in a year or two years time when I was doing a search because as we know, the media files can grow to quite a number on some of our sites and going back and trying to find it can be a very manual and time consuming task.

So that’s a little hint for you. Hope to see you in Taipei at my talk. Come and see me talk about accessibility, the why, how, and when. And also if you see me around at WordPress, come and say, good day. Thank you very much.
Jeanne Tan:
Hi there. WordCamp Asia attendees. I’m Jeanne and I’m excited to share a powerful strategy that actually works from my lightning talk on how to outrank your competitors with easy on page SEO techniques. Did you know that something as simple as the order of words in a sentence can totally change how your content ranks on Google? For example, search engines interpret the statement, tourists flock to the beach during summer to be different from the beach is flocked by tourists during summer. The first sentence tourists flock to the beach means search engines focus on queries that involve tourists. On the other hand, the beach is flocked by tourists prioritizes content that respond to queries on popular destinations. Tiny tweaks like this make a huge difference, especially if you’re aiming for those featured snippets. I’ll reveal more secrets like this on March 9th to help your content climb the results page. Join me for my session. I’ll be in room 101C for trap four at WordCamp Asia. It’s about time to get technical.
Robert Li:
My is Robert Li, but most people don’t call me Bob. My talk at work campaign of 2024 is called ChatWP Talking to WordPress Generative AI. I’ll be giving an overview of the current and future state of generative AI and probably most interestingly for listeners, we’ll be showing a demo of the chat bot that will rely on the content in your WordPress site with a CoLab notebook and all the resources that attendees can access and trap and sell. This will allow them to build an end-to-end production ready custom open source chat bot with their own WordPress site. I hope to see you all in Taiwan at the talk.
Wes Theron:
Hi, my name is Wes Theron and I’m part of the training team, and I will be joining WordCamp Asia from New Zealand. The name of my session is called Learning Pathways on learn dot WordPress dot org. This is an informational talk about the work we are currently doing to create learning pathways that cater to learners of different roles and skill levels. If you are keen to learn more about this initiative and our plan to redesign the Learn website, join me on the last day to explore learning pathways. We all have WordPress origin and stories and are constantly acquiring knowledge and skills in diverse spheres of life. Our goal is to provide free learning material to empower folks while just starting out with WordPress or who are aiming to achieve a more advanced proficiency. As part of the training team, we are passionate about education. I will leave you with some food for thought. Lifelong education will allow you to banish boredom. And Henry Ford said, anyone who stops learning is old at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. I can’t wait to see all of you in Taiwan. Cheers.
Perth Woratana Ngarmtrakulchol:
Hi everyone, first of all, thanks to Do the Woo podcast for having me. My name is Perth. A quick one about me. I have been using WordPress for 15 years, and I’m currently working as analytics engineer at Canva, the online design software company. In my lightening talk the title is Multiply Your Income Streams With WordPress Development Skills. I will be sharing about how I have monetized my WordPress development skills throughout my career and how I was able to create multiple income streams with these skills to support in my life circumstances. I’ll also give you multiple ideas on how you can also make a living or how you can grow your career from workplace development skills. You’ll be able to take away a list, a thing or two from this talk. For example, did you know that workplace development skills can lead to teaching job in WordPress or web development, which is highly rewarded too. Teaching job will also give you multiple options. You can do one-on-one training. You can do one too many offline training, or you can do the online course, which is basically one to infinity. So if you are a developer or keen to become one, come join me in the session. See you.
Nada ElSharkawy:
Hello. Hello, this is Nada ElSharkawy. I’m a senior marketing manager at GoDaddy and I’m part of the commercial strategy theme. So excited to be speaking at WordCamp Asia 2024. I have a lightning talk under the title, starting a WordPress Meetup, the Highs and Lows.

by BobWP at March 18, 2024 09:15 PM under Uncategorized

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March 28, 2024 12:00 PM
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