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




















































";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"WPTavern: Block Visibility 3.0.0 Makes Pro Version Free, Adds Browser and Device Control, Visibility Presets, and More";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:126:"https://wptavern.com/block-visibility-3-0-0-makes-pro-version-free-adds-browser-and-device-control-visibility-presets-and-more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4239:"<p>WordPress contributor and developer Nick Diego has released <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/block-visibility-3-0-0-a-new-chapter-begins/">version 3.0.0</a> of his Block Visibility plugin, which allows users to conditionally display blocks based on specific user roles, logged in/out, specific users, screen sizes, query strings, ACF fields, and more.</p>



<p>The biggest change in this update is that Diego has decided to merge the Pro version with the free plugin so users no longer have to purchase a commercial add-on to get extra features. Diego launched the pro version in 2021 to help support his efforts developing the free plugin but said this is no longer necessary.</p>



<p>&#8220;Originally I had planned on developing a plugin business,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But I found my love for building, contributing, and educating surpassed my desire to be an entrepreneur in the plugin space. This way, I can focus on my passion and also support the community.&#8221;</p>



<p>Version 3.0.0 includes previously pro features such as <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-browser-device-control/">browser and device control</a> that allows for displaying custom content based on the browser and/or device of the current user. It also adds <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-location-control/">Location control</a>, which isn&#8217;t what it sounds like. It allows users to show or hide content based on where the block is located on the website and attributes of its location. Blocks can be conditionally displayed based on post taxonomy, post type, and other rules that offer more control over block visibility than one might ever have imagined possible.</p>



<img />Block Visibility documentation on <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-browser-device-control/">Browser and Device Control</a>



<p>This update brings in controls for <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-cookie-control/">Cookies</a>, <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-metadata-control/">Metadata</a>, <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-referral-source-control/">Referral Source</a>, and <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-url-path-control/">URL Path</a>. It expands the <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/how-to-use-the-date-time-control/">Date &amp; Time</a> control to include Day of Week and Time of Day. </p>



<p><a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/guide-to-visibility-presets/">Visibility Presets</a> is another mind-blowing new feature in this release, the kind that makes you wonder how this could be a free plugin. It allows users to create a collection of visibility conditions that can be applied to other blocks with a single click. Blocks can have multiple presets applied, and Diego said this is just the first iteration of this feature. </p>



<img />Block Visibility documentation on <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/guide-to-visibility-presets/">Visibility Presets</a>



<p>This release includes everything except the WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads controls, which include conditional block logic for shopping cart contents, product details, customer metrics, and more. Diego plans to add those later in April with the next version (3.1.0), so he can make a few further changes to them before including them in the free version. Users who rely on the WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads controls will need to wait until the next release to deactivate the Pro add-on.</p>



<p>The Block Visibility plugin&#8217;s <a href="https://blockvisibilitywp.com/knowledge-base/">documentation</a> is already extensive, with videos, screenshots, and tutorials for nearly every feature. Diego said he will be investing more time into documenting how developers can create their own <a href="https://github.com/ndiego/block-visibility-add-on-example">Block Visibility extensions</a>. The plugin currently has more than 9,000 active users and will likely see more growth now that the pro features are getting rolled into the free version. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 25 Mar 2023 02:31:54 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148481";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-6/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39309:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Transcript ↓ Learn from Corey Maass, a master of WordPress plugins and apps, and Cory Miller, a marketing, business, and WordPress experience guru. The two discuss the intimacies of partnering on a product and how solopreneurs can benefit from support. Top Takeaways: <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show: <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our&#8230; </p></div>


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



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">60</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







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



<p>Learn from <a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a>, a master of WordPress plugins and apps, and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a>, a marketing, business, and WordPress experience guru. The two discuss the intimacies of partnering on a product and how solopreneurs can benefit from support.</p>



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



<ul>
<li><strong>The Value of Partnerships.</strong> Starting a business can be a lonely experience. Having someone to bounce ideas off, talk through tough subjects with, and celebrate successes with makes a significant difference. Having that collaborative support system can make managing a business more enjoyable and streamlined, which is a huge benefit, especially for startups and small businesses.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Discussion vs. Decision. </strong>It’s important to be intentional with communication considering the stage you are in when you are improving a product or creating something brand new. Being vocal about whether you are still discussing or whether you are ready to make decisive moves is critical to keep the process moving forward without missteps.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>The Art of Failing.</strong> Understanding that taking risks and being willing to fail in order to ultimately achieve success is key for solopreneurs and partnerships. Quantifying your success rate on projects isn’t the ultimate indicator of how successful you truly are. Stumbling through a myriad of shortcomings while still pursuing success is powerful.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



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



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



<li><a href="https://elementor.com/">Elementor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/?mm_campaign=brand&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtsCgBhDEARIsAE7RYh23X1L149jQi21SES3Z61y0aaY770GDRGkCSimg-hDgjtWb6JfA0xEaAqzDEALw_wcB">Beaver Builder</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



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



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



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



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



<h2>Session 6 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>



<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Ooh, cheers are good. . You talented, man.<br />Corey Maass: So yeah, session six. Okay. Impromptu time change, but life happens. And that&#8217;s part of the<br />journey of being a founder. Exactly.<br />Cory Miller: Let me push it to Twitter.<br />Corey Maass: Are we founders? Yeah.<br />Entrepreneurs, founders Starters,<br />for once. I&#8217;m not a solopreneur,<br />Cory Miller: you know, I talked to a lot of people over the years and, um, Like solopreneurs. And the one thing I<br />hear from a lot of &#8217;em, cause I had, I had partners from the beginning, they weren&#8217;t active. But is that, you know,<br />business as lonely as it is and um, [00:01:00] having somebody else to kind of walk with I think is pretty dang<br />awesome.<br />Yeah,<br />Corey Maass: I, I did it best when I worked in a co-working space with, Four other guys that I was friends with and<br />we had formed a little cohort and so regularly, you know, get out of, get out of the house, get to a, a focused place<br />of work. And then have people who you were on a journey with and knew their journey.<br />And so you could grab somebody and say, Hey, can we talk this through for a minute? And that went in all<br />directions. Like it just makes such a difference. Yeah,<br />Cory Miller: it, it really does. Um, I had Matt Daner and I themes, um, On the team. And of course my Lindsay<br />was, um, in and around the team in different ways. Um, and it was just then I have my business group, which I told<br />you I&#8217;m meeting with this afternoon, [00:02:00] I&#8217;ve walked with for 11 years, and I tell you, wow, it&#8217;s such a tough<br />job.<br />You know, where you&#8217;re trying to, like we&#8217;re doing here. Where if it wasn&#8217;t with you, I&#8217;d be sitting here going, okay,<br />what segments are we gonna try to hit? You know, and. And the highs and lows. You know, there&#8217;s things that you<br />celebrate as an entrepreneur that you not, maybe not necessarily celebrate with your team.<br />And just having another group, or a sidekick or a partner or whatever that is, I think is pretty dang healthy for me<br />Corey Maass: at least. Yeah. And yeah, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a step better than rubber ducking it also, I find, Because it&#8217;s like,<br />you know, I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t always immediately respond to you, and you don&#8217;t always immediately respond to me.<br />But I have a, a real human being to say things at, even if it&#8217;s not to talk about it with, and, you know, when you see<br />the message in the afternoon and, and [00:03:00] celebrate it with me, that I fixed a bug or whatever it is like that.<br />Makes a difference and you ping me out of, you know, whenever you kind of, whenever you need to.<br />Like, that&#8217;s such a difference cuz like, who did I, oh, for a different product. I was having issues with, not issues at<br />all with, um, EDD I was trying to hack the hell out of EDD , let&#8217;s be honest. Um, to make it do things that it has no<br />right doing. Because it&#8217;s the better product. I&#8217;d rather use the core and slap my janky ass code on top of it.<br />Anyway, there&#8217;s my little EDDendorsement. Um, but I know one of the head programmers over there and was like,<br />I would love to have him look at this. And he and I were in a. Co-working group years ago. And so I have a little bit<br />of connection with him, you know, but haven&#8217;t talked to him in a year or two.<br />And so I had to hesitate and I hemmed and hod and was like, let me, let me refactor this five [00:04:00] times<br />before I send it over to him because I don&#8217;t wanna waste his time. I&#8217;m using up a favor. I guess that&#8217;s my long way<br />of saying that I&#8217;m using up a favor. And uh, and if you have somebody. You&#8217;ve lost count of favors or you have a<br />partner, then you don&#8217;t have to hesitate.<br />And honestly, that, that lack of hesitation is huge. I hadn&#8217;t really thought about it like that, but it&#8217;s just that what a<br />waste of time. I mean, it was great that it made me refactor my code because, you know, that&#8217;s never a bad thing.<br />But, uh, have to think that hard about just asking a question rather than just asking a question.<br />Maybe that&#8217;s why we all like chat, GPT or something.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. You&#8217;re not alone, . No, I, I think that&#8217;s, uh, when I left eye themes, I wanted to do coaching and<br />had some clients my first year before I started with post status and, um, I said, you know, the hardest for me was<br />when I was [00:05:00] in trying to make these big decisions and, and even the little ones, and just having<br />someone.<br />I could bounce things off of. So that, that&#8217;s one of the reasons I did coaching. One of the reasons I talked about my<br />group as much like I left, came back, they were gracious enough to, to let me come back. And, um, these were the<br />several of the guys that were in Phoenix with me and, um, In fact, that&#8217;s who&#8217;s funeral, uh, dad&#8217;s funeral.<br />One of the guys that went with us is where I&#8217;m going today. Mm. Uh, while we couldn&#8217;t meet at a normal time, but,<br />you know, just kind of doing life together, but then having someone just to bounce stuff off of, like, I feel like you&#8217;re<br />very open and we&#8217;re having this conversation where it&#8217;s, it feels like, you know, the whole improv plus one, it&#8217;s like<br />we&#8217;re keeping, we&#8217;re, I think we&#8217;re trying to keep each other kind of.<br />on the trail here, but you know, you&#8217;d let me veer off and like discuss it. Let&#8217;s take a sidebar side trail. Yeah.<br />[00:06:00] And come back, . And that&#8217;s part of my process though, and I really deeply respect that and appreciate<br />it for you. Um, but just having somebody that understands that you can bounce stuff off, it&#8217;s pretty, pretty critical.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. Well, I, I&#8217;m a big proponent of, uh, discussion, not decision, which I. Once I learned that I, I&#8217;m<br />a, I&#8217;m a big rule person, so like I applied that rule to most conversations and try to make sure that it&#8217;s clear to<br />everybody else. Um, but also I think more often it&#8217;s the. Being vocal about when you&#8217;re switching to decision.<br />So it&#8217;s like, okay, you know, we are still discussing, we are still discussing. Now we are deciding because as you&#8217;ve<br />seen, I&#8217;m prone to go, oh, that sounded cool, and then I just go off and, and do it rather than, you know, is that the<br />best use of my time, is at the highest priority, all [00:07:00] those kinds of things.</p>



<p>So try to impose that upon myself a lot of the time too of like, is. You know, because I&#8217;m also, I&#8217;m the type of<br />extrovert who needs to talk out loud. And so there tends to be a lot of discussion. Um, you know, oh, hold on, I got<br />a barking dog. Come on.<br />Cory Miller: I think that&#8217;s good, especially in the beginning, in the start, you know, um, is making, you know, the<br />whole woodworking thing is measured twice, cut once kind of thing. Not to say to get into overthinking or<br />overanalyzing, but we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re figuring it out, you know? Right. Uh, together. And I think that&#8217;s been pretty critical<br />and really, like last week was huge breakthrough for me.<br />It&#8217;s. Seeing, okay, here&#8217;s v1, or here&#8217;s the free version, I should say, what we&#8217;re gonna do there, and then there&#8217;s<br />all this, we can kind of chase and see what&#8217;s there for [00:08:00] the pro side.<br />Corey Maass: Yep. Yep. One more, one more comment on partnerships too is I think I&#8217;ve talked about like I&#8217;ve,<br />I&#8217;ve looked for people to work with for years and one of those.<br />one of the outstanding questions is always that I&#8217;ve, that I&#8217;ve heard from other people that I&#8217;ve worried about too, is<br />the, like, how do you, how do you quantify compatibility? Right? And it&#8217;s like, I couldn&#8217;t, I think I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m bringing this<br />up rhetorically, like, it&#8217;s not a question necessarily unless you have something, unless you have an answer.<br />But it&#8217;s like, You, you and I sort of talked about it a little bit and then said, okay, let&#8217;s work on this together, and I<br />didn&#8217;t hesitate and, and of course then I&#8217;m like, you know, then we have amazing con like we&#8217;ve had amazing<br />conversations. . And I think that it helps that we both have [00:09:00] been aware of each other for a while and so<br />have some sense of how we operate.<br />And I think I&#8217;ve also, I&#8217;ve heard you speak in public, you&#8217;ve heard me speak in public, so I, I had a sense of you,<br />and I&#8217;m being presumptuous, but I imagine you had some sense of me. Um, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s definitely one of those,<br />What does this look like in a year? And if we end up with, you know, an I themes or a, you know, something,<br />something, Of of decent size.<br />You know how, how do you know that that person that you casually said, oh yeah, we should work on this little<br />plugin together with ends up being the person that you partner with. And that&#8217;s, it&#8217;s crazy cuz there&#8217;s so much<br />around pairing people and, you know, meeting co-founders and stuff like that, and, Yeah, I don&#8217;t know.<br />It&#8217;s ju it&#8217;s like I say, I think I&#8217;m bringing it up rhetorically from my perspective. It&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s a crapshoot. You just kind<br />of go with your gut .<br />Cory Miller: [00:10:00] Yeah, I, I totally agree. Um, you know, I, I&#8217;m trying to think how many times I&#8217;ve partnered<br />and it&#8217;s been quite a few, you know, uh, Brian, initially with post status, I had two partners.<br />They weren&#8217;t, weren&#8217;t active in the business. Um, at Ithe, I&#8217;ve had several. Um, partnerships last four years. Um,<br />and, uh, I, I almost think it&#8217;s like this product stuff, partner, partnerships and products are very similar in my<br />experience for me is that . I told Lindsay, I said, you know, when we started Ithe, it&#8217;s like people bought it and they<br />kept buying it and it was pretty, pretty simple, like a good looking theme.<br />You know, and this is 2008, and I did these things and put &#8217;em out there and things that I kind of wanted for myself,<br />but I didn&#8217;t think, like, I didn&#8217;t have a big inner monologue of like, should I do dropdown menu? Should I not?<br />Should I do? [00:11:00] I was just doing things I wanted to do, which spoke to like, I was obviously embedded in<br />our user group that were customers that eventually bought to us.<br />And I think that was first. But like I say, I compare it to baseball, like products and maybe even partnership and<br />people, it&#8217;s like, you know, classic growing up was Tony Gwen, San Diego Padres. He got on base all the time. If<br />you hit 300 in the majors, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re in the Hall of Fame. If you have a career consistently with 300 in, you&#8217;re,<br />you&#8217;re in the Hall of Fame, even close to it, you&#8217;re probably in the Hall of Fame.<br />And, uh, when I left Ithe and tried to start some new projects, products, and businesses and partnerships, I was<br />like, oh yeah, I just know, I know how to do this, I can do this. And I was like, oh, you know, that means Tony struck<br />out three out of 10 means Tony struck out or got out seven times out of 10, but he&#8217;s in the Hall of Fame.<br />And I&#8217;m like, wow. That&#8217;s kind of like [00:12:00] entrepreneurship and products. And, and I&#8217;m gonna go even<br />further, uh, uh, partnerships, you know, like it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not a high percentage of wins in my personal experience. , um,<br />from products like, I don&#8217;t know if you, if I told you this, we had 200 s skews that I think were not left 200 plus.<br />How many of those actually made money? Right? Like maybe it&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a little bit low, but like, you know, and uh,<br />then I&#8217;ve gotten crushed cuz things just don&#8217;t go as fast or as easy as I always want them to. And you&#8217;ve done a<br />number of products and I don&#8217;t know where you&#8217;re, you staying with partnerships, but, Just a lot of failure, a lot of<br />learn learning lessons.<br />Corey Maass: I, I learned, I was in New York, uh, I had just moved to New York after college and there was one<br />couple, so I was pursuing mo a music career, mostly, um, DJing, producing dance music, electronic music. And<br />there was one [00:13:00] married couple who threw a party and had started a label and. They were, uh, they were<br />bananas.<br />They were all over the place. They were, they&#8217;re still very eccentric people. I, I love them to death, but they are, uh,<br />sometimes out there. But I would follow them anywhere. And I, and I finally quantified it and I was like, because<br />they. 7% of what they say they&#8217;re gonna do. Everybody in New York City talks a great game.<br />Every bartender is a comedian. You know, every person you meet, working any kind of job is actually writing a<br />script or is in a band or whatever, which is awesome. But most people talk a really good game and don&#8217;t actually<br />do. What they say they&#8217;re gonna do. And so I think that for me, a lot of it is, is exactly what you talked about.<br />Like people don&#8217;t have to have success. Like I didn&#8217;t wanna work with you be necessarily because you had<br />success, [00:14:00] but because you&#8217;ve put yourself out there, you&#8217;ve clearly done a lot, you&#8217;ve tried a lot, and you<br />keep trying. And I think that that, like for me, that&#8217;s the gold standard. Like I try to live by that.<br />Like I put, I put a lot of products out there. Same thing have, how many of my products have actually like done<br />anything made little blips, you know? But you&#8217;ve gotta keep getting up to bat. I think this is the first baseball</p>



<p>analogy I&#8217;ve ever made in my life. But you&#8217;ve gotta keep getting up to bat and eventually you&#8217;re gonna hit<br />something, presumably, you know, big or small.<br />And then you want to keep, you know, practice makes perfect kind.<br />Cory Miller: I tell you, the part of like, keep going on is the one I&#8217;ve really struggled with the last four years. Hmm.<br />Just keep going on. Um, and then last year with the burnout, um, and all that kind of stuff is just like, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s tough<br />because, uh, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s one thing if like this, nothing huge, significant, but not like life shattering.<br />Is dependent on [00:15:00] this. Um, but you know, when I left Ithe, I didn&#8217;t really have another business to just<br />kind of walk onto. Now Posttest came next, you know, the next year, and it wa and it was like really good timing for<br />me. Um, but now it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s still a part-time gig for me. So like, It, it&#8217;s been tough cuz you just kind of have<br />these ideas to put &#8217;em out there.<br />And the theme I told people for how I&#8217;ve done business, at least my ithe chapter, is stumbling successfully. Like ,<br />keeping going, tripping but not falling flat on your face. You know, like, just kind of keep a low profile to the ground.<br />Cause you&#8217;re gonna keep stumbling. And, and you know, a lot of the products, for instance, were stumbled like,<br />and I&#8217;m not, I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s pure.<br />However, there was healthy blend of right time or a place, um, hard work, right. To get more luck. And then once<br />the first one was rolling, it was easier to add [00:16:00] new, you know, when you get that first hit, it&#8217;s easier to hit<br />to do others. But I still didn&#8217;t have even a like 50% success rate , you know?<br />Corey Maass: Yep. Well look at Google.<br />How many products have they shut down, you know? Yeah. So anyway, sorry. I wanna respect your time. So<br />we&#8217;ve got 10 minutes. I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve dragged this out much longer than I needed to. I did too. Um, um, so product, we<br />have version 0 0 2 is in the repo. Uh, the has come a long way. Uh, we have added, uh, a few bells and whistles.<br />I&#8217;ve cleaned up the UI a bit, and then a duplicate. Cropper is now in the media library. So if you go to media library,<br />there&#8217;s now an extra button that says Upload and Crop. Next to add new. I felt a little bad totally ripping out the<br />ADD new button, but we can decide to do that because there is now a [00:17:00] bypass.<br />So you, even if you open the cropper, And select an image. There&#8217;s a button that says, crop it. There&#8217;s a button<br />that says Just upload it so you can bypass the crop. Um, and then the other sort of sneaky thing that I, I added last<br />minute yesterday is if you go to media, add new, it technically opens the media library with the cropper open.<br />So we are totally hijacking media a new, so I mean, all these. Discussions, not decisions, but at this point we&#8217;ve<br />still got fewer than 10 users. And you and I are, are kind of, you know, we are a kitten with a ball. We&#8217;re bating it<br />around just kind of deciding, you know, where we wanna land with it.<br />Cory Miller: Um, it&#8217;s great. The new stuff that you pushed out, I think that&#8217;s awesome. Iterating on some things<br />that you feel like, hey, I, this is a small little check I can do that I think is so good for progress on the product.<br />[00:18:00] So I was looking at it on my personal site and then my test site and um, I&#8217;ll give you, I&#8217;ll give you notes,<br />uh, in chat too.<br />But when I tried to upload from the media library and I just installed the new plugin on my personal, lemme do this<br />real quick. It&#8217;s not showing the preview. Sorry. I should just be showing you.<br />It&#8217;s not showing that preview. And maybe I&#8217;ve got the wrong image or something like that, but, oh, huh. So we got<br />uploading crop<br />so it&#8217;s not preview in here, and then I just click square crop. Huh. So I don&#8217;t, I I, I&#8217;ve done it at least on two sites<br />and it&#8217;s done this, so I wanted to mention it. Ooh. But lemme just say, Thank you for that button iterating on those<br />buttons, these two, because I was testing your previous version [00:19:00] and with my, with images from my<br />phone, and one was like sideways and I was like, Hey, so oh yeah, you got that in like, I don&#8217;t<br />know, an hour after we test.<br />Corey Maass: Well, I, yeah, the, I mean this is, we are still riding the, the happiness that is the library we&#8217;re using.<br />Um, so there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s, they. Rotate. They also have, um, you can actually flip it horizontally and vertically, which is<br />an option, but I don&#8217;t think we need it. Um, I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t yet see the use case. Um, but rotate, I was like, I will add<br />it.<br />He must be onto something. And the fact that you pulled it from your phone and we&#8217;re like, oh, instead of rotating it<br />on my phone and then uploading it again, make creative tasks simpler, easier, fun. There you go. Like, you<br />shouldn&#8217;t have to think like, oh, I have to rotate it in one place before I upload it to another.<br />Um, but I will go fix that bug. So, um, the, to me, the outstanding [00:20:00] question is, um, we, I think we did<br />come to the conclusion last week that we want a settings page, which let. The creator of the site or the whoever is<br />controlling the site, which might be the same person who&#8217;s creating content, but to go into a settings page and say,<br />four featured images, we want 16, nine, and we want them to be 1600 pixels wide every single time.<br />Set it once, forget it, and then they go set their featured image right. When we are including that. Originally we&#8217;d<br />said that that was be, that would be a paid thing, but I. I kind of feel like the free version&#8217;s useless without it.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, I do too. And I think we&#8217;re gonna get more momentum, um, with this, with that thing cuz we, like<br />we talked last week, really becomes a cool utility tool for a, a problem.<br />And so<br />Corey Maass: and, and is and is feature complete? Is product complete? [00:21:00] Yep.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. So the savings page with the custom. Dimensions. That&#8217;s really our biggest thing left, is that<br />right?<br />Corey Maass: Uh, and, and we want to, there&#8217;s all the other holes, all the other places where you upload an<br />image. So to me, um, after media library, I think block is the next big one.<br />So I think we, I think we need, cuz I, I use the classic editor and I&#8217;m gonna look at. Adding our cropper to featured<br />image. You know, and, and classic editor plugin has, you know, millions of installs. So I, it&#8217;s, it there. I don&#8217;t think<br />there&#8217;s, to me, there&#8217;s not a clear majority one way or the other. Gutenberg block editor over classic editor.</p>



<p>We need, we need the cropper in both. Um, but since we have [00:22:00] the beginning of the block, I think that<br />that&#8217;s, um, the way to go. And I, I, at some point I will look. Also applying it to the classic editor. Okay. But it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s<br />finding all of those primary places and there&#8217;s a lo as we&#8217;ve talked about, there&#8217;s a long, long tail.<br />Like eventually we will build a module for Elementor and, and Beaver Builder. Um, but we need to work, work for<br />vanilla WordPress first. Yeah.<br />Cory Miller: So that leaves me at really, and I&#8217;m with this with process too, is like, we need a lot, it seems like we<br />need a lot of users. Mm-hmm. to start getting more users in there, giving feedback, requesting features.<br />And this next one with the, uh, well the blocks will be big, but that&#8217;s another conversation. But like, I think the<br />custom dimensions, then we&#8217;re getting [00:23:00] something. I ped and ccd you in those. As you know, Robbie<br />from Beaver Builder, Kathy San from Cadence. Um, I need to look at generate press. Um, but then we bumped up<br />against like everybody be gone, being gone for Asia or Camp Asia.<br />Um, but yeah, are you going to any word camps? I&#8217;ll have it down for like a placeholder for Europe and then US is<br />standard for me for sure. You are gonna go, yeah, I was supposed to go to Phoenix, but yeah. What, what about<br />you? Do you have any plans.<br />Corey Maass: I was, uh, thinking about US . So if you&#8217;re gonna be there, then yeah, we need to meet up.<br />That&#8217;s in August, so. Okay. It gives us, um, let&#8217;s do plenty of time to, I think that&#8217;d be a blast. Yeah. We could do<br />this live. That&#8217;d be fun. Do it live.<br />Cory Miller: Let&#8217;s, uh, let&#8217;s plan. Yeah, let&#8217;s plan on that. I&#8217;d be, that&#8217;d be great if another opportunity comes up in<br />between. Um, I know work camps are getting started and [00:24:00] stuff, or, um, we&#8217;ve loosely been throwing<br />around some in-person stuff with.<br />Post, but I&#8217;ll let you know, uh, before we even announce that and see if you&#8217;re able to, to get to it too. Um, nothing,<br />sorry.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. Um, I derailed us. So you were talking about getting users. Um, do we, to me, I&#8217;m starting<br />more and more, I&#8217;m getting anxious that we don&#8217;t have a website. Okay. Which, I mean, we.<br />crop.express the website that is currently just the cropper, um, but to, with no mention of the plugin. And so I&#8217;d love<br />for you to start thinking about what that looks like,<br />even if it&#8217;s a little banner that then links to a landing. You know, we could have crop.express/wordpress plugin and<br />have a landing page temporarily, but [00:25:00] just cuz it&#8217;s even like I&#8217;m now. I&#8217;m linking people to the plugin in the<br />repo, but I feel like we wanna start expanding the use case, expanding what we&#8217;re talking about, you know, to a<br />website.<br />Cory Miller: Um, yes, absolutely. I think we&#8217;re there<br />Corey Maass: in the coming weeks. It doesn&#8217;t need to be tomorrow. Yeah,<br />Cory Miller: I was thinking about. Um, from the brand we talked about last week too. Mm-hmm. , it&#8217;s like, do we<br />just go ahead and make the keep, keep crop.express like it is? Hmm. Probably link to it, but then at some point<br />we&#8217;ll probably want to change an update plugin to go what our new brand is.<br />And that made me think about, my mind went to. Some discussion that could be recorded like this for users, not<br />about our product [00:26:00] necessarily, or this detailed stuff, but you know, hey, here&#8217;s some sources we can,<br />where you can go find all, you know, all these images. Um, some of those mar more messaging, marketing<br />content, thoughts we had last week.<br />I was like, you know, that might be, um, pretty good. It&#8217;s like having that site. Maybe scheduling, you know, some,<br />like, we outline it loosely and just talk through and then we can take that, you know, put it on our YouTube channel,<br />all that kinda stuff. And then, um, maybe see if we turn that into like our lead magnet or something like that to start<br />building emails.<br />That&#8217;s where my head goes initially, but I&#8217;ve. We&#8217;ve got two things on my list, outreach and website. Um, right now,<br />at least until you tell me otherwise. Um,<br />Corey Maass: well, and, and the other thing that Kathy brought up that I thought was valuable was to aid in your<br />discussions. [00:27:00] She&#8217;s like, oh, what does it do? And we&#8217;re, and you were like, here&#8217;s the plugin.<br />And she&#8217;s like, Oh, thanks. Now I have to go find a WordPress install, install it on this WordPress install. And then<br />because it&#8217;s essentially a a beta, we have no guidance. We have no user docs, we have no anything. And so she&#8217;s<br />like s Now if she even gets that far, she&#8217;s like splashing around trying to figure out what the hell it does and how<br />so?<br />Um, I kind of feel like we are getting close to, like, I could do a. QuickTime, screen capture of here&#8217;s how you re<br />crop your featured image. 1, 2, 3. Mm-hmm. , here&#8217;s how you crop an image going into media library, you know,<br />and put them on YouTube or you know, even just to have them in our back pocket. One for any potential users, we<br />can link to those.<br />If they&#8217;re on YouTube, we can put those in our readme, which goes on the, you know, So it&#8217;s Crop Express in 30<br />seconds, a video in [00:28:00] that, in the Read Me Doc in the, in the repo. Um, and it gives you something to link<br />to when you&#8217;re having dis discussions because rather than you having to do a demo or people trying to figure it<br />out, you know, here&#8217;s, here&#8217;s a quick 32nd video, then let&#8217;s have a conversation.<br />Yeah. So it seems like if you agree that I feel like that should go on my list. Oh,<br />Cory Miller: if you&#8217;re good to put on your list, absolutely. Yeah, I<br />Corey Maass: can bang through those pretty<br />Cory Miller: quick. And that lends back to website is like having something where people can see it. Mm-hmm. .<br />Um, yeah, I&#8217;ll, okay, I&#8217;ll do some thinking on that.<br />Corey Maass: Yeah. Again, I feel like we&#8217;re, right now these are discussions, not decisions, but good ideas, so,<br />Yeah. Uh, ruminate on them a little bit today, and then, you know, this week or next, let&#8217;s make some decisions.</p>



<p>Okay? [00:29:00] All right. And I&#8217;ll continue. No matter what, there&#8217;s this. You know, as a developer, you&#8217;re like<br />building product and it&#8217;s, and it&#8217;s a straight line.<br />It&#8217;s a rocket ship going up, but it&#8217;s inevitable to do everything else. There&#8217;s, there&#8217;s the, the triangle. So as the<br />triangle goes up, it gets wider and wider. and wider. I&#8217;m just seeing it. It&#8217;s like I can just keep adding features. I can<br />just keep making the product better, but nobody&#8217;s gonna know about it.<br />Nobody gives a shit. There&#8217;s no, you know, but it&#8217;s like, Ever so slightly the more features then it&#8217;s like the more<br />you want a website, the more you want docs, the more you want, uh, feedback. The more you want assets, the<br />more you want swag, the more you want, you know, and it just keeps getting broader as, as much as it gets taller.<br />It feels like that<br />Cory Miller: It does, it def definitely blends over time. Um, okay, so I&#8217;ve got outreach and website to continue the<br />outreach outreach. Um, [00:30:00] I think Kathy, I think Robbie, when he&#8217;s back, um, I need to reach out to the<br />Elementor team.<br />Corey Maass: Do you have, um, like the starting in the conversation seemed good. Do you have a plan for<br />specific questions that we&#8217;re trying to get answered?<br />Um, or do you wanna leave it broad?<br />Cory Miller: What I intend to get to them with that is like getting to the heart of what are the things that annoyed<br />the team, building the themes. Mm-hmm. , what are they hearing from customers? Um, and, or even, even seeing<br />like they see sight and like the images just blown out and stuff.<br />And I, I want to keep those conversations open enough where they can tell us something I might surprise us that<br />goes in a particular direction.<br />So, and I think Rob Robbie&#8217;s very open to that. He just is out this week. So yeah, [00:31:00] sure. I&#8217;m really eager<br />to hear what he says. And that&#8217;ll be our first integration or, you know, potential integration for us thinking through<br />that. Um, so that&#8217;s kind of my intention. And then, uh, same thing with, um, any other theme framework from<br />Element towards generate press<br />sounds. But open. Do you have any thoughts or anybody else we should talk to? But you know, and then, well, the<br />story I&#8217;ll share too is like, here&#8217;s what free is gonna be, you know, and then to start to share the story to lead to this.<br />This could be a great tool for y&#8217;all to recommend to your communities kind of thing.<br />So I&#8217;ll, once I get some of those, I&#8217;ll drill down into, okay, cadence. What are the ratios, what are the things that we<br />could build into free to be, you know, that utility tool?<br />Corey Maass: Yeah, for sure. [00:32:00] So that, that&#8217;s kind of my plan there is just kind of digging in and seeing<br />what we hear. Trying to get to that true marrow of it.<br />Like how are people using it? What are you seeing? And hopefully be surprised. Love.<br />Um, and I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll do some thought too on the website. I know that&#8217;s been something we&#8217;ve been talking about,<br />um, but I like what you just said, like that solves the problem. If we switch to a branded site that talks ab, that&#8217;s, or<br />a company site that lets us be open up to anything, crop Express can stay the same.<br />Start to talk about the plugin and link back to what ultimately would be the shopping cart or the mm-hmm. , you<br />know, the main marketing site around it. But let crop.express as a website, be a lead magnet, a U [00:33:00] utility<br />site that is a lead magnet for the WordPress plugin. And for anything else, we end up spitting up.<br />Mm-hmm.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. And then you&#8217;ve got a great free tool out there, so. Right. I do think, like you said, the banner<br />to, do you want the WordPress version, you know, you want this in WordPress and link over to the thing will be<br />helpful as we kind of grow for people to Yep. See the vision. Okay. All right. Anything else you had?<br />Corey Maass: No, I, I just, we&#8217;ve been, I like, I think I talked to you before. I, I&#8217;ve been watching Silicon Valley, so<br />I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m feeling like we need to scale up. We need to get some, um, venture capital. I need at least three more<br />developers under me.<br />Cory Miller: Um, I gotta get back and<br />Corey Maass: watch that. Move all of our operations out to Silicon Valley.<br />Of course. Hey, I&#8217;m in San Francisco in three weeks I&#8217;ll do our first raise. Um, I&#8217;ll talk to some angels out<br />Cory Miller: there. There you go. . When that came out, I, [00:34:00] I actually happened to have at the time a<br />little community car. It was a Ford Escape. Yellow, just like, uh, ,<br />Corey Maass: Avi Avik,<br />Cory Miller: ak a classic.<br />Corey Maass: All right, man. Well, good luck today.<br />Okay. It&#8217;ll be a long day. Hope you&#8217;ll be all right. Yeah. And, uh, I&#8217;ll<br />Cory Miller: appreciate that.<br />Corey Maass: Um, yeah, I&#8217;ll keep you posted.<br />Cory Miller: Okay, sounds good. And I&#8217;ll get these webinars back on the, reschedule them and put &#8217;em on our<br />calendars. Okay. So, sounds<br />Corey Maass: good. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Steve.<br />Cory Miller: Bye.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Mar 2023 22:38:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"WPTavern: WooCommerce Payments Plugin Patches Critical Vulnerability That Would Allow Site Takeover";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142990";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:110:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-payments-plugin-patches-critical-vulnerability-that-would-allow-site-takeover";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2021:"<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-payments/">WooCommerce Payments</a>, a plugin that allows WooCommerce store owners to accept credit and debit card payments and manage transactions inside the WordPress dashboard, has patched an Authentication Bypass and Privilege Escalation vulnerability with a 9.8 (Critical) CVSS score. The plugin is active on more than 500,000 websites.</p>



<p>Beau Lebens, WooCommerce&#8217;s Head of Engineering, published an <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/03/23/critical-vulnerability-detected-in-woocommerce-payments-what-you-need-to-know/">advisory</a> about the vulnerability today, which he said &#8220;could permit unauthorized admin access to impacted stores&#8221; if exploited. It was discovered by a security researcher participating in WooCommerce&#8217;s HackerOne program.</p>



<p>WooCommerce worked with WordPress.org to push out a forced update for sites running WooCommerce Payments versions 4.8.0 through 5.6.1 to patched versions. Many store owners have automatic updates turned off to ensure proper testing before updating. Now that the vulnerability has been made public, it is imperative that all stores running version 4.8.0+ of the plugin update manually as soon as possible. WooCommerce sites hosted on WordPress.com, Pressable, and WPVIP have already been patched.</p>



<p>At this time WooCommerce does not have any evidence of the vulnerability being exploited but the plugin&#8217;s engineers recommend checking for any unexpected admin users or posts addd to the site. The <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/03/23/critical-vulnerability-detected-in-woocommerce-payments-what-you-need-to-know/">advisory</a> includes further details of what to do if you believe your site has been impacted. As a cautionary measure, WooCommerce has temporarily disabled the <a href="https://woocommerce.com/woopay/">WooPay</a> beta program since the vulnerability impacts this new checkout service they have been beta testing.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Mar 2023 21:45:13 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"WPTavern: Navigating the New Era of AI-Assisted Code Generation in WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142932";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://wptavern.com/navigating-the-new-era-of-ai-assisted-code-generation-in-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10059:"<p>The world is learning new ways of moving faster with the help of AI, as the increased availability of the technology is poised to transform the way humans work.  Generitive AI is decades old but recent advances and new tools like DALL-E (launched in January 2021) have made AI more accessible to the public. </p>



<p>When <a href="https://chat.openai.com/chat">ChatGPT</a> arrived in November 2022, it sparked an explosion of tools built to extend its capabilities to nearly every aspect of work. Conversational AI tools can now handle a myriad of mundane tasks like <a href="https://resumeworded.com/">updating your resume</a>, <a href="https://askyourpdf.com/">reading and summarizing PDFs</a>, and <a href="https://www.decktopus.com/">creating slides for presentations</a>. Yesterday Google announced it is testing <a href="https://bard.google.com/">Bard</a>, its AI chatbot rival to ChatGPT and Bing AI. In the fast-moving world of companies innovating with AI, GitHub also announced <a href="https://github.blog/2023-03-22-github-copilot-x-the-ai-powered-developer-experience/">Copilot X</a>, which is powered by GPT-4 and adds Copilot to pull requests, docs, and the command line and introduces chat and voice features for Copilot.</p>



<p>WordPress plugin developers are adopting AI-powered tech and building it into their products, such as <a href="https://rankmath.com/content-ai/">RankMath&#8217;s AI-generated suggestions for creating SEO-friendly content</a>, WordPress.com&#8217;s experimental blocks for <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-is-testing-ai-generated-images-and-content">AI-generated images and content</a>, and a Setary&#8217;s plugin that <a href="https://setary.canny.io/changelog/effortlessly-enhance-your-product-descriptions">uses AI to write and bulk edit WooCommerce product descriptions</a>. The wpfrontpage site is <a href="https://wpfront.page/list/ai-plugins/">tracking</a> these plugins but WordPress.org also lists <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/ai/">dozens</a> of plugins with AI, many of them created to write content or generate images.</p>



<p>In addition to adding AI to plugins, developers have attempted to have ChatGPT build plugins for them, with <a href="https://twitter.com/chuckWnelson/status/1636082994619244547">varying</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DarrenClasby/status/1638216096363708416">degrees</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/edyoung_tweets/status/1638324231174864896">success</a>: </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wptavern.com/chatgpt-creates-a-working-wordpress-plugin-on-the-first-try">ChatGPT Creates a Working WordPress Plugin – On the First Try</a></li>



<li><a href="https://thewpminute.com/so-i-built-a-wordpress-plugin-with-chatgpt/">So, I Built a WordPress Plugin With ChatGPT</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-asked-chatgpt-to-write-a-wordpress-plugin-i-needed-it-did-it-in-less-than-5-minutes/">I asked ChatGPT to write a WordPress plugin I needed. It did it in less than 5 minutes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUvdtk1xjso">Unbelievable! How I Built 3 WordPress Plugins In 10 MINUTES using ChatGPT AI!</a></li>
</ul>



<p>So far developers <a href="https://twitter.com/mrvinceo/status/1638574726984486913">report</a> having more success with ChatGPT than Bard. In some cases the creation process is incomplete and requires some expertise to ensure the plugin will work, but it&#8217;s also opening up the world of plugin development to those who would not be able to create one without hiring a developer.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I have never coded a WordPress plugin in my life<br /><br />With the help of Chat GPT 4, I just did<br /><br />In the span of ~30 mins, I was able to work with GPT4 to come up with a solution for my WooCommerce store to add a discount of 1.5% for product quantities above 1 w/ a cap set at 6%<br /><br />INSANE</p>&mdash; Amado Serna (@amado_serna) <a href="https://twitter.com/amado_serna/status/1637170105363886081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">ChatGPT developed a WordPress plugin for us in just 3 minutes. Negotiating with a developer would have taken longer. <a href="https://t.co/lRqjWd9JPV">https://t.co/lRqjWd9JPV</a></p>&mdash; Amperly AI insights (@amperlycom) <a href="https://twitter.com/amperlycom/status/1636370735030738945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>WordPress developers who want to share their AI-assisted creations with the community have also started submitting them to WordPress.org.</p>



<p>After receiving a string of violations, WordPress&#8217; Plugin Team is <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/21/use-of-code-generators-must-remain-gpl-compatible/">warning developers</a> that code submitted to the official directory must be GPL compatible.</p>



<p>&#8220;There is no guideline <em>AGAINST</em> using generated code,&#8221; Plugin Review Team rep Mika Epstein said.</p>



<p>&#8220;You’re welcome to use whatever tool you want to build plugins. That said, <em>you</em> are 100% responsible for that code if you chose to host it here&#8230;</p>



<p>&#8220;But the important bit here is that it means if ChatGPT, for example, built your plugin, <strong>you</strong> have to verify that all the code used is GPL compatible. Just like you are expected to validate licenses on libraries and code-snippets, everything in your plugin has to be GPL compatible. Should we determine that your code is a copy of someone else’s or includes code from non-GPL plugins, your submission will be rejected and any live plugins will be closed.&#8221;</p>



<p>Epstein cited an example where a developer built a &#8220;scroll to top&#8221; plugin with code that was copied from another, existing plugin hosted on WordPress.org. It was submitted five times and rejected every time. </p>



<p>&#8220;Yes it’s fine to fork code,&#8221; Epstein said. &#8220;You have to credit them, however, and that’s something those AIs have been pretty bad at doing.&#8221; </p>



<p>Commenters noted that autocomplete in modern IDEs work in a similar way, as well as snippets. These types of tools can enhance productivity but prospective plugin developers who may not be as informed about software licensing, should stay away from wholesale copying another&#8217;s work without crediting them. This may require doing some extra research on the code that AI spits out.</p>



<p>In this new era of AI-assisted creation, we have essentially hitched our wagon to a star, as Ralph Waldo Emerson described in his essay on Civilization in 1870:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star,’ and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day and cost us nothing.</p>
<cite>Ralph Waldo Emerson, <a href="https://emersoncentral.com/essays/civilization/">Civilization</a></cite></blockquote>



<p>That decade brought humanity inventions like the phonograph, telephone, and the incandescent light bulb, followed by the automobile in the next decade. Emerson&#8217;s essay explores man&#8217;s relationship to technology where principles—&#8221;justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility&#8221;— are the guiding light and accelerant of technology&#8217;s impact.</p>



<p>The GPL is one of those principles for the WordPress community, which has enabled its uncommon growth and its wildly successful ecosystem. There are still a lot of grey areas when it comes to licensing and the code generated by AI. Developers would do well to use AI-generated code for inspiration and give credit where they can.</p>



<p>Web developer Mark Praschan <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkPraschan/status/1636025339926257664">created his first plugin for WordPress.org</a> using ChatGPT. He used the free version, gave it a few prompts describing what he wanted it to do, and ChatGPT produced a functional plugin.</p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/northstar/">NorthStar</a> allows users to display a message in the WordPress admin bar with settings to customize it along with the text and background colors.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;The first version worked great,&#8221; Praschan said. &#8220;I made a few small aesthetic improvements to the settings page and the display of the message, but we were already 95% of the way there!&#8221;</p>



<p>Praschan also had ChatGPT design an ASCII Art logo for the plugin. It required a few back-and-forth prompts but took just a few minutes before it was ready to be copied and pasted into Photoshop. </p>



<img />



<p>The plugin did not pass the code review on the first try for two reasons that Praschan shared on Twitter:</p>



<ul>
<li>Issue # 1: Variables and options must be escaped when echo&#8217;d. There were 2 instances of not &#8220;escaping late&#8221;</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/MarkPraschan"></a>Issue # 2: Generic function/class/define/namespace names. One function was missing the &#8220;northstar_&#8221; prefix.</li>
</ul>



<p>&#8220;How did I fix it? I made ChatGPT do it, of course,&#8221; Praschan said. &#8220;I copy/pasted the problems and a few snippets of my code and it spat out the fixed code.&#8221;</p>



<p>There are more of these plugins coming &#8211; where a person need only dream up the idea and prompt their chosen AI tool for the code. These will more than likely be simple plugins for the time being, but it&#8217;s not too early to establish some best practices for using code generators. WordPress is navigating new territory where anyone can create a plugin with a dash of creative prompts and very little code experience.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Mar 2023 04:29:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"Post Status: WordPress 6.2 RC4 • Code Generators and GPL";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148430";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-6-2-rc3-code-generators-and-gpl/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21999:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-march-20-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (March 20, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">We&#8217;re just one week away from WordPress 6.2. Have you tested it and read the field guide yet? If you write code for a plugin that is in the WordPress Plugins Repo, you&#8217;ll want to ensure the code is GPL compatible.  </p></div>


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



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fas_robot kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WP 6.2 RC 4, Code Generators</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9ea.png" alt="🧪" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/23/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-4/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 4</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64b-1f3fe.png" alt="🙋🏾" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f5fa.png" alt="🗺" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/09/wordpress-6-2-field-guide/">WordPress 6.2 Field Guide</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f916.png" alt="🤖" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/21/use-of-code-generators-must-remain-gpl-compatible/">Use of Code Generators Must Remain GPL Compatible</a></p></div></div></div>



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



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



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



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-3/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 3</a></li>
</ul>



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



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-5 wp-block-columns">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-central"><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org">Central</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/03/wordcamp-buffalo-2023/">WordCamp Buffalo 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/03/wordcamp-entebbe-2023-an-amazing-recap/">WordCamp Entebbe 2023: An Amazing Recap</a></li>



<li><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/02/get-your-tickets-for-wordcamp-kerala-2023-on-march-25th/">Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25th!</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/23/recap-of-contributor-working-group-inaugural-mentorship-chat-on-march-20-2023/">Recap of Contributor Working Group Inaugural Mentorship Chat on March 20, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/21/meetup-organizer-newsletter-march-2023/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: March 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/21/community-team-goals-for-2023-chat-session/">Community Team Goals for 2023 :&nbsp;Chat session</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/20/contributor-working-group-mentorship-kick-off-chat-agenda-march-20th-1200-utc-emea-and-2100-utc-amer/">Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Kick-off chat Agenda | March 20th 12:00 UTC (EMEA) and 21:00 UTC (AMER)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/17/community-team-goals-for-2023-next-step/">Community Team Goals for 2023 : Next Step</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/21/a-week-in-core-march-20-2023/">A Week in Core – March 20, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-4-22-march/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.4 (22 March)</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-wordpress-6-2">WordPress 6.2</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/23/wordpress-6-2-release-day-process/">WordPress 6.2 Release Day Process</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/23/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-4/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 4</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/fyi-navigation-section-of-new-site-editor-experienced-removed-for-6-2-rc-2/">FYI: Navigation section of new Site Editor experienced removed for 6.2 RC 2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-1/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 1</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/14/wordpress-6-2-translation-status-march-14-2023/">WordPress 6.2 Translation Status (March 14, 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/04/wordpress-6-2-ready-to-be-translated/">WordPress 6.2 ready to be translated</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/09/wordpress-6-2-field-guide/">WordPress 6.2 Field Guide</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/08/requests-library-upgraded-to-2-0-5-in-wordpress-6-2/">Requests library upgraded to 2.0.5 in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/patterns-api-expanded-to-include-template_types-property/">Patterns API expanded to include template_types property</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introduction-of-block-inspector-tabs/">Introduction of Block Inspector Tabs</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/shadows-in-global-styles-with-wordpress-6-2/">Shadows in Global Styles with WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introducing-the-html-api-in-wordpress-6-2/">Introducing the HTML API in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-2/">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introducing-move_dir-in-wordpress-6-2/">Introducing move_dir() in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/sticky-position-block-support/">Sticky position block support</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/upgrading-to-react-18-and-common-pitfalls-of-concurrent-mode/">Upgrading to React 18 and common pitfalls of concurrent mode</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/add-new-prop-to-serversiderender-component/">Add new prop to ServerSideRender component</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/google-fonts-are-included-locally-in-bundled-themes/">Google Fonts are included locally in bundled themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/custom-css-for-global-styles-and-per-block/">Custom CSS for global styles and per block</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/minimum-height-dimensions-block-support/">Minimum height dimensions block support</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/03/editor-components-updates-in-wordpress-6-2/">Editor Components updates in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/03/i18n-improvements-in-6-2/">I18N Improvements in 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/28/custom-settings-wordpress-6-2/">Customize settings for any block in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/19/style-book-preview-of-blocks-in-global-styles/">Style Book preview of blocks in global styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/update-to-content-only-editing-filter-namespace/">Update to content only editing filter namespace</a></li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/02/wordpress-6-2-accessibility-improvements/">WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/28/wordpress-6-2-beta-4-postponed/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 Postponed</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">6.2 Live Product Demo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">Phase 2, Finale</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/03/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-2/">Hallway Hangout: Performance Improvements for WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/06/roadmap-to-6-2/">Roadmap to 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/18/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-2/">Bug Scrub Schedule for 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/early-bug-scrub-schedule-for-wp-6-2/">Early bug scrub schedule for WP&nbsp;6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/17/wordpress-6-2-planning-roundup/">WordPress 6.2 Planning Roundup</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/21/dev-chat-agenda-wednesday-march-22-2023/">Dev Chat Agenda, Wednesday March 22, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/17/dev-chat-summary-march-15-2023/">Dev chat Summary, March 15, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/21/editor-chat-agenda-march-22nd-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: March 22nd 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/19/editor-chat-summary-march-15-2023/">Editor chat summary: March 15th, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-blog">Developer Blog</h3>



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/03/13/design-share-feb-13-mar-10/">Design Share: Feb 13–Mar 10</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-do-action"><a href="https://doaction.org/">do_action</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://doaction.org/event/ruralhackers/">Rural Hackers Do_Action 2023 in Anceu Spain</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/03/16/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-meeting-march-21-2023/">Agenda for Docs Team bi-weekly meeting March 21, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/03/15/call-for-volunteers-to-help-with-6-2-end-user-documentation/">Call for volunteers to help with 6.2 end user documentation</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/03/21/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-03-22/">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-03-22</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/03/14/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-7-march-2023/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, 7 March 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/03/20/agenda-biweekly-matrix-chat-thu-march-23-2023-10am-utc/">Agenda: Biweekly Matrix Chat – Thu, March 23, 2023 (10AM UTC)</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/03/20/last-week-openverse-2023-03-13-2023-03-20/">A week in Openverse: 2023-03-13 – 2023-03-20</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/21/performance-chat-summary-21-march-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 21 March 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



<h2 id="h-polyglots"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots">Polyglots</a></h2>



<ul>
<li> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/21/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-march-22-2023-1300-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – March 22, 2023 (07:00 UTC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/21/new-translation-project-wp20-wordpress-net/">New translation project: wp20.wordpress.net</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-plugins-1"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



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



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



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/03/22/plugin-review-team-update-20-march-2023/">Plugin Review Team Update: 20 March 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-project">Project</h2>



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



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/agenda-for-march-23rd-support-meeting-2/">Agenda for March 23rd Support Meeting</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/support-ticket-triage-session-march-29th-2023-at-1600-utc/">Support ticket triage session – March 29th 2023 at 16:00 UTC&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/03/16/support-team-meeting-updates-for-march-16th-2/">Support Team Meeting Updates for March 16th</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/14/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-all-things-layout/">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about All Things Layout</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-theme">Theme</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/03/03/hallway-hangout-community-themes-initiative/">Hallway Hangout: Community Themes Initiative</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/20/meeting-agenda-for-march-21-2023/">Meeting Agenda for March 21, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/18/contributor-day-recap-wordcamp-asia-2023/">Contributor Day Recap – WordCamp Asia 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/what-kind-of-wordpress-theme-do-i-have-classic-block-or-something-else/">What kind of WordPress theme do I have: classic, block, or something else?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wp-rest-api-custom-fields-authentication-and-testing/">WP REST API – custom fields, authentication, and testing</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/displaying-testimonials-on-your-website/">Displaying testimonials on your website</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/interacting-with-the-wordpress-rest-api/">Interacting with the WordPress REST API</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=exploring-some-of-the-new-6-2-wordpress-features">Exploring some of the new 6.2 WordPress features</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-create-a-website-on-mobile-part-2">How to create a website on mobile (Part 2)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-join-the-training-teams-welcome-committee-2">How to join the Training Team’s Welcome Committee</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-join-the-training-teams-welcome-committee">How to join the Training Team’s Welcome Committee</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-exploring-wordpress-6-2">Block Themes and WordPress: Exploring WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-update-a-video-tutorial-for-learn-wordpress-org">How to update a video tutorial for Learn.WordPress.org</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=build-a-blog-with-wordpress-6-2-released-today">Build a blog with WordPress 6.2 (Released today!)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-live-stream-11">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



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



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



<h2 id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-14-2">PHP 8.2.3 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-14-3">PHP 8.1.16 Released!</a></li>



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



<li><a href="https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.4">Composer 2.5.4</a></li>
</ul>



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



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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
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<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/">LinkedIn</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png" alt="💼" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
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<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Mar 2023 01:05:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: #68 – Chris Reynolds on Why To Use Composer With WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=142848";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/68-chris-reynolds-on-why-to-use-composer-with-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52027:"Transcript<div>
<p>​[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, why you might like to add Composer into your WordPress website workflow.</p>



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



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



<p>So on the podcast today we have Chris Reynolds. Chris has been working with WordPress for over 15 years. He&#8217;s freelanced, worked with Event Espresso, WebDevStudios, Human Made, and is now at Pantheon as a CMS ecosystem engineer and WordPress technical lead.</p>



<p>He&#8217;s spoken at WordCamps and at OpenWest about all aspects of WordPress.</p>



<p>I suspect that many of the people listening to this podcast are not using Composer in their WordPress workflow, and to Chris this is something that you should think about implementing, and he&#8217;s here to explain why.</p>



<p>Chris starts off by talking about the kinds of projects that he&#8217;s worked on, and how we found WordPress.</p>



<p>We then get into the weeds of what Composer is and the benefits that it brings. It&#8217;s essentially a package management system, and makes it easy to set dependencies for your project and manage them within Composer.</p>



<p>Why would you want to do that though? If you&#8217;re just building brochure websites, then perhaps you&#8217;ve don&#8217;t. But if your project is more complex then this might save you a lot of time.</p>



<p>Chris describes scenarios in which she thinks Composer is a good fit; if you want to add in specific packages and how those packages are managed and updated.</p>



<p>He explains how you can install composer depending on the OS that you&#8217;re working with, and how it structures the files and directories that are created.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast, we talk about how composer can be useful for teams, and Chris&#8217;s use of Composer to keep everyone clear on how the project is structured.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve thought about using a package management system, such as composer, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Chris Reynolds.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Chris Reynolds. Hello, Chris.</p>



<p>[00:03:40] Chris Reynolds: Hi. How&#8217;s it going?</p>



<p>[00:03:41] Nathan Wrigley: Very well, thank you. Chris is on the podcast today to talk to us about something that I confess I know very little about. I&#8217;m going to guess that if you&#8217;re a typical WordPress user, you too may be learning a few new things today. It&#8217;s all going to be about Composer. Before we get into Composer, what it is, how it works, and all of that, wouldn&#8217;t mind Chris if you just orientate our listeners. Give us a little bit of insight into you and your WordPress journey. The companies that you&#8217;ve worked at. The things that you&#8217;ve been involved in and so on. So over to you, Chris, give us your intro.</p>



<p>[00:04:14] Chris Reynolds: Sure. I came across WordPress right around the time that my son was born, which was 2005. The internet was a very different place back then, wasn&#8217;t it? At the time I was looking for something to like share pictures with family and stuff, make a website.</p>



<p>Back then I had what was then referred to as a weblog. It was before that was shortened to blogs, and it was literally a log of things that I did on my website, update changes. And that was all hard coded html. So when I was trying to think of something to share pictures, didn&#8217;t want to do it hard coded. I did do that for a little while and then I decided this was not the thing I wanted to be doing.</p>



<p>So there used to be a website called Hot Scripts. There I found a blogging platform called S Blog, and I was using that for a really long time. But as happens in open source, and actually honestly, as part of what happened in the WordPress history, the original maintainer and author disappeared for a little bit, and it wasn&#8217;t getting updates and I think there were some security things at some point. And I started looking for something else. Had some friends that were talking about WordPress, so I was like, I&#8217;ll try this thing out, and basically haven&#8217;t looked back.</p>



<p>At a certain point after my son was born, I decided that I wanted to quit my regular job, which at the time was doing tech support for grocery stores, and become a freelance web designer. And I did that for a few years. Was familiar with all of those Elance and I don&#8217;t even remember all, like freelancer.net or something. Like all those really old sites to get freelance work. And I worked for a time for a company that&#8217;s actually local, as an outsource, freelance web designer.</p>



<p>There, I believe owner, ran off with all their money or something, and the company closed down. That was a fun story. And then I met the folks from Event Espresso, which is a event management plugin. I met them at WordCamp Salt Lake City because they&#8217;re local, and Salt Lake City is where I live.</p>



<p>And I started working with them initially just doing tech support for them, and then I got into a little bit of development and then I got into a little bit of project management and development. And then I was at a WordCamp, I was speaking. And Pluralsight, which is an online training platform saw me speak and asked me if I wanted to do that sort of thing for them as a, as an author of WordPress related training courses.</p>



<p>So I started doing that while I was working at Event Espresso, and then eventually I quit to focus on that. And did that for about a year or so. And then, I started getting into agency world. So I worked at WebDevStudios for a couple years. And then I went to Human Made. I was there for almost five years. And now I&#8217;m working at Pantheon as a software engineer focusing on WordPress ecosystem things.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;ve been involved in very small projects. I&#8217;ve been involved in very large projects. I&#8217;ve been involved in training. For a while I did some work with the docs team for WordPress documentation. I went to the community summit in San Francisco way back in the day. I&#8217;ve spoken at lots of local WordCamps and OpenWest which is also held locally. And yeah, I&#8217;ve been around for a little while.</p>



<p>[00:07:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, you really have. That&#8217;s an amazingly long history, and going back with WordPress to 2005, you really were right at the forefront. It was just the very beginnings at that point.</p>



<p>[00:07:22] Chris Reynolds: It had been around for a while. If you look at the screenshots of the admin, I wasn&#8217;t the very first iteration, but I think I was maybe the second iteration.</p>



<p>[00:07:31] Nathan Wrigley: Who knew back in 2005 that it would become such an important part of the ecosystem of the web in general. We&#8217;re at the point now where 40 plus percent, I still never quite know what that number means, but it&#8217;s a big number and WordPress is an important part of it.</p>



<p>You say that you&#8217;re a Pantheon at the moment. Just give us a little bit of insight into Pantheon because I confess, I don&#8217;t know a great deal about it. But in my mind I&#8217;m thinking managed WordPress hosting and also managed CMS hosting possibly some other variants as well. Just tell us a little bit about what Pantheons skin in the game is with WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:08:09] Chris Reynolds: You&#8217;re not wrong. We like to call ourselves a web ops platform and we also have kind of coined that web ops phrase, which means that outside of, speaking about Pantheon, it almost doesn&#8217;t exist. What web ops is, it&#8217;s website operations, right? It&#8217;s the things that make your website go.</p>



<p>And what that means practically is that the way that the platform has been built is from the ground up to make sure that teams are able to develop on their websites in a way that is easy to deploy, that is safe, and that is secure. And there&#8217;s all sorts of platform centric things that are part of the workflow.</p>



<p>Pantheon was one of the first, when I was working at WebDev, was the first exposure that I really had to Pantheon. And it was the first platform that I had used that had integrated Git. So you didn&#8217;t have to like, put your stuff on GitHub and then figure out a way to point that deploys to a server somewhere.</p>



<p>It was already built in. And they had been doing that from the very beginning. It also had as part of that there is a dev test live workflow where there&#8217;s separate environments. And this isn&#8217;t uncommon today, but it was one of the first places where you could do that and had it built in.</p>



<p>And then the real sort key feature that I enjoyed as a developer and still enjoy as an employee honestly is the concept of multi devs. Where if you have a branch that you are doing work on and you want to see what that branch would look like. Typically in my agency days, the way that you would handle this is by merging that into dev, and dev becomes really messy, dirty because it&#8217;s got lots of basically untested code, or code that was maybe tested and then rolled back or whatever.</p>



<p>Dev is always nasty, a nasty place to be, and you never deploy from dev. That was always the rule when I was working in agency stuff. Multi devs solve that problem by spinning up an entirely new environment for a branch. So you can create a multi dev off of whatever branch, and then you can test it there, and then you can merge that into dev or whatever.</p>



<p>Your dev branch is clean because it&#8217;s not, you&#8217;re not getting all this test code, experimental code that&#8217;s getting merged in, and then maybe you&#8217;re making some changes or maybe you&#8217;re fixing some stuff, undo some stuff that was from an old merge.</p>



<p>That way you can keep your branches clean. And that&#8217;s a really cool thing that Pantheon does that I&#8217;ve often have wished for when I was working elsewhere, or working on sites that were not hosted on Pantheon. So that&#8217;s one of the things that Pantheon does.</p>



<p>We were talking before we started recording that Pantheon was built by four or five Drupal dudes. So it&#8217;s been a Drupal shop for a very long time. And then maybe about 10 or so years ago, when I became aware of them they started doing WordPress sites. Still built on the same infrastructure that they had built with all the same live workflows, multi dev, all that sort of stuff.</p>



<p>And now we&#8217;re getting into a point where we&#8217;re really trying to build out and optimize for WordPress and find where our gaps are in terms of how the platform has been built and what WordPress specifically needs. And that&#8217;s essentially what my team is involved in.</p>



<p>[00:11:10] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Yeah, that&#8217;s a real interesting set of things that you talk about there. I didn&#8217;t actually know prior to our conversation we had before we hit record, I didn&#8217;t know that it had all begun on the Drupal side of things, but obviously as WordPress has been in the ascendancy for the last 10 years, it does feel like an important pivot for any company really to make, is to give an experience to WordPress users which is optimized for them.</p>



<p>So, yeah, I&#8217;ll make sure to link in the show notes to anything that we talk about. So if you&#8217;re listening to this, don&#8217;t worry too much, you can go to the WP Tavern website and search for this episode and find all the links there.</p>



<p>Now I&#8217;m going to include quite a few links to what we&#8217;re about to talk about. This is the main thrust of the podcast. It&#8217;s something called Composer. Now, when Chris reached out to me, he mentioned that he wanted to talk about Composer, and I&#8217;ll be really honest, it&#8217;s not something that I&#8217;m familiar with. Chris was very kind to gather a bunch of links, which I&#8217;ve now read, and I&#8217;ve tried to understand.</p>



<p>But I feel that Chris, you are going to school me today, so we&#8217;ll go right back to the basics. The first thing I think to mention is that I don&#8217;t think I know anybody else in the WordPress community who is using Composer with the sort of urgency that you feel it should be being adopted. Most of the people that I know are freelancers, possibly working in an agency and the typical workflow is, you know, if you&#8217;re working with a team, you&#8217;ve got a method of doing that.</p>



<p>But you may well be working on your own website. You may be working for client websites, and you&#8217;re just installing WordPress and a bunch of plugins and themes and so on and so forth. But you&#8217;ve got this bee in your bonnet about Composer and the virtues of it. So let&#8217;s go right back to the beginning. You&#8217;ve probably heard the word Composer before if you&#8217;re listening to this podcast, I imagine. But you may not know what it is. So let&#8217;s go there. What is Composer and why is it in any way important?</p>



<p>[00:12:59] Chris Reynolds: At its base Composer is a package management system. So if you&#8217;re at all familiar with npm which is primarily for JavaScript packages, maybe you&#8217;ve used that for Gutenberg stuff. Maybe you&#8217;ve used that for other JavaScript things. Composer is that thing for PHP packages.</p>



<p>In the past there were things like Pear and PECL, P E C L which did the same sort of thing. Composer does those same-ish things, but better. So at its core, it&#8217;s a package management system, which means it&#8217;s able to do like dependency management. And what that means is, if I have a package, and I have a certain version of a package.</p>



<p>Say I want php code sniffing, I can require that package with Composer. I can make sure that package is up to date. But I can also be specific about the versions of that package that I want to keep. Maybe I want to be on PHP code sniffing version eight or eight dot whatever, but I don&#8217;t want to upgrade to nine yet, or something like that.</p>



<p>I can be specific about my version dependencies, the versioning system that I&#8217;m choosing and be really, either really explicit. I can pin it to a specific release. I could do, I only want the security or patch releases. Or I could be really vague and say, just give me the latest version of whatever.</p>



<p>And Composer has, it&#8217;s based on the idea of semantic versioning. So as long as your packages and WordPress itself doesn&#8217;t use semantic versioning notably, and neither to do a couple other things like Yoast doesn&#8217;t do it, because they&#8217;re using sort of the version numbers don&#8217;t matter school of thought, which kind of breaks the whole thing a little bit.</p>



<p>But if you&#8217;re doing that sort of semantic versioning, which is common throughout just open source software in general, of major dot minor dot patch fr security then you can be really, you can update your things and feel fairly confident that an update is not going to break your thing, break your site. This is perhaps not a myth now as things in WordPress have improved. But the analogy that I like to think of and the reason why feel like Composer is, really important in a WordPress environment is the, I&#8217;ve got a million plugins, maybe not a million, maybe 20.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;ve got a couple themes and I go to my WordPress updates page, or maybe it&#8217;s got auto updates, right? And something happens and an update happens, and I wasn&#8217;t there. Either I bulk updated all of them or it happened in the background. Either way, I&#8217;m not looking at each individual update that I&#8217;m doing, and something breaks. My website white screens, and I have no idea what caused that problem.</p>



<p>I have to go back, I have to undo everything. I have to like, rename my plug-ins folder. I&#8217;m now in panic mode because my production site is white screening. It&#8217;s because of an update. It&#8217;s because something went through that I was either not paying enough attention to, or that happened automatically in the background that broke my site.</p>



<p>Composer, and the way that WordPress is built with allowing, essentially anybody who has access to the plugins page or the updates page to run those updates means that you&#8217;re putting the power and the control over administrating code that is deployed to your site, to whoever has access to those screens, right?</p>



<p>And Composer almost flips that and says, no, we&#8217;re going to give this power to people who actually touched the code. Who maybe are more aware of dependencies and change logs and what an update might mean to a site. And that&#8217;s, sort of where I, see the value of Composer just broadly.</p>



<p>[00:16:21] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That was, yeah, a really interesting description of how it works. Could you give us the nuts and the bolts of that? In other words, could you unpack what&#8217;s going on? In other words, how is it, how is it installed? How do you get it to bind to the different variations? You mentioned, that you may want it to update to a certain version of such a thing. How do you actually do all of that?</p>



<p>[00:16:44] Chris Reynolds: Composer is software that runs on your computer. You can install basically anywhere. So if you&#8217;re on a Mac, you might use Homebrew to install it. You can run it on a Windows machine, it&#8217;s just a binary. You can run it on a Linux machine, there are packages for it. It&#8217;s essentially cross platforms, so you can use it or you can run it anywhere. Once you have it on your operating system. . Then, we&#8217;ll just use a WordPress, vanilla WordPress site, as an example, if I had a WordPress site maybe I do wget or download the zip file of WordPress and I unzip the package. Okay, that&#8217;s great.</p>



<p>And then I have Composer on my, on my, system so I can run at the command line Composer in it. And that&#8217;s going to start the process of building a Composer dot json file. And then once I have that Composer dot json file, I can start pulling in dependencies. I can say Composer require this thing, this package by this vendor.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s going to, by default, install my dependencies into a vendor folder. Composer also has a built-in auto loading system. Which means that then in my project, if it&#8217;s a WordPress project, I can have a file. I could throw it into wp-content or a rather wp-config, or I can throw it into a mu plugin that loads the Composer auto loader file so that any packages that are being pulled in through Composer or libraries or whatever, are automatically pulled in because Composers does that, just does it for me.</p>



<p>If I&#8217;m doing WordPress specific things, what I would also need to put in my Composer file is a additional repository for W Packagist. So out of the box, Composer works with a platform, a website, a repository called Packagist, and that&#8217;s where all of the packages live.</p>



<p>If you go to packagist.org today, you can do a search and you can find all sorts of stuff. What you won&#8217;t find is a ton of WordPress related stuff. You&#8217;ll find some. There&#8217;s Human Made has a ton of stuff up there, which I know because I worked there. And I&#8217;ve put a bunch of Pantheon things up there.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s some other people who have been putting stuff on Packagist, just core like, Yoast notably has stuff up there. But it&#8217;s not a WordPress place, it&#8217;s just a general open source place, just like npm again. W Packagist is a bridge between the wordpress.org repository and Composer.</p>



<p>And it is just a mirror of the WordPress plugins and theme repositories for Composer based WordPress projects. So if you add W Packagist as a repository in your Composer json, now I can do Composer require and I can say W Packagist plugin slash WordPress SEO. And that&#8217;ll pull in the latest version of Yoast SEO into my Composer file.</p>



<p>Or I can say Composer require P Packagist theme 2010, and it&#8217;s going to pull in the 2010 theme, of most recent version. That&#8217;s sort of a little bit of the nuts and bolts. That&#8217;s how the Ccomposer json is built. You can also obviously edit this file manually. And then if you want to get into versioning, when you pull that stuff in, it&#8217;s going to give you a sort of its default. Which is typically the major dot minor with a little caret before it, which means that it&#8217;ll accept all minor versions, but it will pause if the version number, the latest version number changes for the major version, right?</p>



<p>if it was like 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.7.2, .3, .5 point whatever, all of those things would get pulled in. But as soon as that 1.7 turns to 2.0, because maybe they made a major release, it&#8217;s not going to get 2.0. It&#8217;s only going to be one point, whatever. Until I change that in my Composer file.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s sort of the default setting. You can be more specific. You can go all the way out to the minor point release and just say, the only updates I ever want to get are these minor or patch releases. To make sure I&#8217;m getting all the security updates or whatever. And not getting minor version updates because maybe I&#8217;m afraid that one of those minor updates might do something bad, or I&#8217;m not, prepared for it yet. Or you can be very vague, and say, just star and give me everything. Or you could say just one, no points, just caret 10 or something. That means that anything above version 10 you&#8217;ll get, doesn&#8217;t matter what the point release is.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s a way that you can solve for that white screen of death scenario that I talked about earlier. Because if I&#8217;m being specific and explicit about what versions I&#8217;m allowing in my updates then I&#8217;m not going to, I shouldn&#8217;t get to a point where something unexpected happens because of an update that happened that ran on my system.</p>



<p>And in addition to that the way that those updates happen at all is by me or an automation system running a Composer update command. And that&#8217;s the thing that says, go look for things that have changed and pull in any differences based on my defined versioning scheme.</p>



<p>[00:21:21] Nathan Wrigley: So you can get really granular with it. You can instruct it to do whatever you choose to do. I like the example there of pausing at the point release. So instead of going from 1.9 to two automatically it just pauses because it&#8217;s two. But 1.8 to 1.9 was okay to do. Yeah, it&#8217;s really interesting, you can get really granular. And then you run the command to run all of the updates and off it goes.</p>



<p>It sounds like, I could be wrong about this. It sounds like you could broadly break down your description for why to use Composer into three things. I&#8217;m thinking, first of all, security. It sounds like it provides, it&#8217;s not really providing security, but it&#8217;s providing security in the sense that it&#8217;s going to update plugins and themes and whatever else you may have coded yourself. It&#8217;s going to do that without your intervention. It&#8217;s going to run on a schedule and it&#8217;ll just get those things updated for you.</p>



<p>Which as we know in a lot of cases, a lot of WordPress websites, I don&#8217;t think the updates are happening for weeks, possibly months, who knows, maybe even years. So all of that gets taken care of. It also sounds like there&#8217;s a big time save here. If you can get this into your workflow, then you can step away from the dull task of updating things. This will just happen on the fly. You could have a setup in Composer that you reuse over and over again on a sort of typical website that you might set up.</p>



<p>And thereby you can just drag in all of the packages on day one of the project. And within moments you&#8217;re up and running with a typical install that you mentioned. Suck in a particular theme or suck in a particular SEO plugin or what have you. You just run the Composer and all of that is just dragged in and you&#8217;re off to the races. It&#8217;s a quick way to get started.</p>



<p>But also, you didn&#8217;t mention this, but it feels like this is a real win for teams. It feels like a team using this workflow, there may be benefits there. So broadly speaking, I&#8217;m talking about teams, times and security. Is there anything in that? Have I sort of got that about right?</p>



<p>[00:23:16] Chris Reynolds: Yeah, I think so. Obviously there needs to be an automated step somewhere in the process of actually running the Composer update. But beyond that, yes, absolutely. And interestingly one of the things that you touched on maybe accidentally even, the idea of sucking in all of these different packages. When I was at Human Made, I worked on Altis, and Altus is their digital experience platform.</p>



<p>And Altis is built almost entirely on Composer, and lots of cool Composer things happening. Altis itself is what&#8217;s known as a meta package. When you install Altis, the initial Composer file is just linking out to a whole bunch of other projects or packages that it brings in. And those themselves have their dependencies. So each, each of the modules, like the security module or the core module or whatever, each of those has its own set of dependencies that it pulls in. So it, really does just sort of like package a whole bunch of stuff that you get just for free when you initially set up a new site using that.</p>



<p>And that was one of the things that going from the idea of, oh, I&#8217;m just going to throw this Composer file in my WordPress site and call that good. That&#8217;s one of the things that really made me think, oh, actually there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a lot more to it here. And one of the things that I first was exposed to when I was working at Human Made, and that I&#8217;m actively doing now with what I&#8217;m working on a Pantheon, is the concept of WordPress itself being just a dependency of your project.</p>



<p>And so like with the initial example, I&#8217;ve got a WordPress site. I unzip it. I throw my Composer, json in the root folder. That means that I&#8217;m using Composer probably to manage my plugins and themes, any other packages I might have. But I&#8217;m still using WordPress itself to update itself. Because WordPress is still part of that root directory, and it&#8217;s not part of the Composer structure.</p>



<p>There are projects, there&#8217;s a couple things out there in the world that&#8217;s already, that have been existed, but one, a big thing that&#8217;s been part of the WordPress ecosystem for a while is by the Roots team called Bedrock. And that&#8217;s what we use at Pantheon. And that, among other things, what Bedrock does is it pulls WordPress in so that it can be a dependency. So that can be just another thing in your Composer file that is being versioned.</p>



<p>So again, same rules apply, right? You can say I want everything past six. You can say I want 6.1 dot anything beyond that. Or you can say, I only want 6.1.1, and when the next version comes out, I&#8217;m going to manually make that change so that I can be explicit about my testing process to make sure that I&#8217;m not going to ship broken code.</p>



<p>[00:25:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that&#8217;s really interesting. The idea that WordPress itself is a package. Okay. I can imagine, given the audience of this podcast, it really does span the whole community, you know. There&#8217;s people in every part of the WordPress ecosystem listening to this. And I can imagine there&#8217;ll be a certain proportion of them who as soon as you start to say things like npm and packages and all of this, and you mentioned, you know, things to do in the command line and da, da, da.</p>



<p>They&#8217;re scratching their heads thinking I don&#8217;t know if this is for me. This all sounds a little bit complicated. So just address that. There&#8217;s a certain level of tech geeky here, I would imagine, But, is it difficult? Is the payback for a, let&#8217;s say a user who is just playing with five or six sites, they&#8217;ve got a few client sites and they can well manage to go in and update the plugins and the themes and all of the bits and pieces that they got set up.</p>



<p>Is there a use case here where, okay, if you&#8217;re sitting on that side of the fence, don&#8217;t even bother? This is probably not needed. Whereas if you&#8217;re on this side and you know you&#8217;ve got more sites than a certain number where it&#8217;s going to be of more use.</p>



<p>[00:26:47] Chris Reynolds: I mean, I definitely think that a lot of the freelancers that I know when I talk to are of the mind that, it&#8217;s just one more thing I need to worry about. And certainly if you are not going to on behalf of your clients go in and make updates, and you&#8217;re handing, once you&#8217;re done at your site, you&#8217;re handing that responsibility off to them.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s going to be too much work for your clients probably. I&#8217;m thinking like small business. I&#8217;m thinking like mom and pop shop. That sort of thing where it&#8217;s really just a user, one person or two people that are running the site. They&#8217;re probably not going to want to do stuff on the command line and you&#8217;re not going to want to train them and that&#8217;s fine.</p>



<p>But I think about when I was at WebDev and we were doing maintenance contracts with clients, and WordPress updates came around and we had basically a person dedicated to reading all of the change logs of every plugin on every site before making any updates. Just to make sure that nothing was going to happen that could potentially break.</p>



<p>And then if there was something that was maybe potentially breaking, they would have to like manually test that themselves on a dev environment, or a local environment or whatever. Just to make sure we&#8217;re not going to run an update and it&#8217;s going to break something. And I think that that process is very tedious and time consuming.</p>



<p>And that process is the process that you&#8217;re saving by using something where you can be more explicit like Composer. And you know that your updates are not going to break anything because the way that you&#8217;ve set up your versioning is the thing that you want it to be, and you feel confident about that structure so that when there are updates, you can go in and yeah, you still need to do testing, you still need to evaluate those things, but you know that you&#8217;re not going to accidentally push something out.</p>



<p>Or you can be at least fairly confident that you&#8217;re not going to accidentally push something out that&#8217;s going to break something. Because breaking things is not a good thing. It&#8217;s not a good feeling to have shipped something when you&#8217;re just doing a maintenance WordPress update release and your client is calling an hour later saying, why is my website white?</p>



<p>[00:28:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess in the case of some of the agencies where you&#8217;ve worked, so Human Made WebDevStudios and so on, it really is enterprise level stuff, and there is no scope for bringing a site down because of a careless update. So the notion that most WordPress users would go in and read the change log before clicking update.</p>



<p>I think that&#8217;s probably not the case. I would imagine most people are fairly cavalier because it&#8217;s their own site, or it&#8217;s a client site that they&#8217;ve got a backup of, and there&#8217;s some mitigation that they&#8217;re, doing all of that. But in the case that you&#8217;ve just outlined where, I don&#8217;t know, maybe these are international brands that we&#8217;ve heard of where the press damage alone in having a website go down for 50 minutes is just unconscionable. You&#8217;ve got to do the background research, and so having these systems in place is truly important.</p>



<p>[00:29:36] Chris Reynolds: Yeah, for sure.</p>



<p>[00:29:36] Nathan Wrigley: In terms of, we&#8217;ve been talking quite a lot about updates. I just wonder what your thoughts are on the, I mean, it&#8217;s not that recent, it&#8217;s several years ago now. The idea that in WordPress you can click a link in the, let&#8217;s say the plugin page. And you can say just go on, update. Whenever something new rolls out, just get on with it and update it. So you can, if you like, trust it. What are your thoughts on that?</p>



<p>[00:29:58] Chris Reynolds: I think it&#8217;s nice for the people that it&#8217;s good for. And I think it&#8217;s definitely helped with WordPress adoption. Because if all I was doing, if I wasn&#8217;t a WordPress developer and all I was doing was being a podcaster and I had a website that was just about my podcast. I&#8217;m not going to care about code. I&#8217;m never going to want to touch the code. I&#8217;m going to want to install WordPress and never look at FTP, or know my server configuration, or care about my database.</p>



<p>None of that. None of that is interesting to me. What I want is I want to plug it in, turn it on, and let it run. And be fairly confident that it is going to continue to run when I have my eyes closed and I&#8217;m not looking at it. So I think that it&#8217;s nice in the sense of creating an ecosystem in which things that you do in WordPress are relatively easy. And the counterpoint to that, I work at Pantheon. Pantheon&#8217;s been involved in the Drupal committee for a very long time.</p>



<p>Talking earlier too about how Drupal has, I think since version eight, integrated Composer into the core of how Drupal works. So sort of the antithesis of this idea of, I&#8217;m going to turn it on and set auto update and then walk away, is the idea of Composerizing everything. So that every change is a code level change.</p>



<p>And what I&#8217;ve found interesting, that I&#8217;ve learned over the last year of being at Pantheon in a difference between the sort of like Drupal ecosystem and WordPress ecosystem, is in WordPress, yeah, there are some people who make it their job to kind of do just general site administration for people.</p>



<p>But it&#8217;s not a huge thing. It&#8217;s like there&#8217;s a couple people that do that sort of thing or they don&#8217;t actually touch the code, but they will do your WordPress updates and that sort of thing for you. In Drupal, there&#8217;s entire agencies where all of what they&#8217;re doing is essentially that, just the maintenance stuff of having a website.</p>



<p>And part of that is because the Drupal admin is a lot more complicated to use, to create sites and pages and views and all sorts of things. It&#8217;s a lot more complicated than the WordPress admin, which I credit to how WordPress is built personally. But the other part of it is the understanding of like, when it&#8217;s okay to update this Drupal module to the next version or that sort of thing. To be aware of what&#8217;s happening on their other sites. And then what combinations work together and that sort of thing.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a whole ecosystem that it&#8217;s really just essentially website management, which doesn&#8217;t exist in the same way in WordPress. And so that&#8217;s sort of what we&#8217;re talking about. The difference between having really hands-on updates. Making sure that things are safe to do. Or making it so that the people who actually do the content editing or other administration on the site, they don&#8217;t have to worry about the stuff that&#8217;s happening in the background because they know somebody&#8217;s taking care of it, versus having just the software take care of that for itself.</p>



<p>And so I think there&#8217;s a place for it. And I think that the reason why WordPress has grown so much over the last many years is because it&#8217;s embraced this, well, we&#8217;re going to just auto update things and not have people stress over that stuff. But, also like the reason why there&#8217;s so many people that are holding onto Drupal is because they want to make sure, they want to ensure that their site is stable and secure and all of those things. And that those things matter for really big companies. It is that divide, right of more casual users versus the enterprise level stuff.</p>



<p>[00:33:09] Nathan Wrigley: I guess because Composer is essentially nothing to do with WordPress. I mean, you know, you&#8217;ve described a scenario in which WordPress can combine with it, which is very helpful. Updating plugins, themes and so on and so forth. I guess this can reach beyond WordPress. So if you&#8217;ve got something bespoke, unique, you&#8217;ve got a package, which is nothing to do with WordPress. Composer can take care of that as well.</p>



<p>[00:33:34] Chris Reynolds: Yeah, and it&#8217;s really useful when you, so in both npm and Composer, there&#8217;s the concept of dev dependencies. And these are dependencies that will install when you do like a Composer install. But you can also say, you can omit the developer dependencies on your production installs, right?</p>



<p>And that means that you can run things like linting and unit testing and all that sort of stuff, which doesn&#8217;t matter if it&#8217;s on the prod site. But maybe if you&#8217;re going to push it to your dev site or you&#8217;re going to keep it on your local machine. And you can manage all those things really easily with Composer.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s definitely WordPress coding standards and there&#8217;s WordPress suites for unit testing. Those things all exist and you can manage those in WordPress. But essentially, like the core thing, like PHP Code Sniffer is not a WordPress thing. It&#8217;s just a, it&#8217;s just a package that exists in the world. And same thing as PHP unit. It&#8217;s just a thing that exists in the world that we have adopted and embraced and brought it into our ecosystem. So for sure, yeah, there&#8217;s definitely value of using Composer to manage sort of like external things.</p>



<p>[00:34:29] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, given that if you went down this route and you made Composer an integral part of your process. You then to some extent become dependent upon the functioning of Composer for your whole process to work. And so that brings me to the Composer ecosystem.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re all always talking about how great the WordPress ecosystem is. There&#8217;s a forum for this. There&#8217;s a Slack channel for that. If you want to find something out there&#8217;s ways of learning. Is the same true of Composer? It&#8217;s an open source project. Does it have a thriving community? Does it receive the updates that one would hope? Does it progress in the same way that we hope WordPress does? Does it have that same feel? Are there resources for learning and so on?</p>



<p>[00:35:07] Chris Reynolds: Well, I will say that the website for Composer getcomposer.org, I believe, is really, the documentation&#8217;s really good. At its core, it&#8217;s a pretty simple idea. The documentation&#8217;s pretty self-explanatory. Where it gets hairy is the distinction between a caret versus a squiggly line, in terms of how you&#8217;re going to do your versioning stuff.</p>



<p>Because there&#8217;s a very subtle but specific difference there. And how to pull in different repositories or how to do more complex things. It gets a little bit hairy. But again, the documentation is all there and it&#8217;s all really good and I found it very useful.</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s enough people in the open source ecosystem generally that are using Composer, that it&#8217;s not terribly difficult to find answers to any questions about Composer. Most things you would encounter have probably been done by someone, and there&#8217;s probably some prior art that you can use to base it on.</p>



<p>So I think that it&#8217;s generally pretty good. And packagist is a great place to find stuff. What I will do when I&#8217;m looking for stuff is I&#8217;ll look on packages, even if I&#8217;m looking for a WordPress thing, just to see if, if that developer has pushed their thing to packages before even looking at wordpress.org, or pulling it in from the W Packagist mirror.</p>



<p>That means it&#8217;s getting a little bit, it&#8217;s like one step closer to the source, right? Because all Packagist does really, to submit a package on Packagist, here&#8217;s your pro tip. You have an account obviously, and then you just say, submit a package and you give it a GitHub repository url, and then it just looks at GitHub. And as long as the GitHub project uses releases, even if it doesn&#8217;t really need to, it just looks at the branches. But if it has releases, then you will have those versions. And if it doesn&#8217;t have releases you can still pull that stuff in using a dev prefix or whatever.</p>



<p>That stuff is all self-contained. It all exists. It&#8217;s all well-maintained, all that sort of stuff. That&#8217;s all good. Composer itself does occasionally get updates. The last big thing was sort of a transition from Composer one to Composer two. And that was a little bit of a, there&#8217;s definitely some growing pains in the transition process of going from one version to the next.</p>



<p>And then they threw a wrench recently, not super recently. But they threw a wrench into things a little bit where there is a new thing that goes into your Composer file called allowed plugins. So if it, if it&#8217;s a dependency is calling something else or whatever. You have basically have to give permission to other vendors to, install things on your behalf. So as long as you, if they&#8217;re in the allowed plugins list then those things will get updated, and if they&#8217;re not in the allowed plugins list, then it&#8217;s not going to update those things. And I believe that was for like, security type things.</p>



<p>That did cause a problem with you know, at Pantheon we have a lot of stuff that&#8217;s based on Composer and we don&#8217;t want to introduce merge conflicts. So if we have a Composer file, that is basically the thing that is used to build sites. And then suddenly that Composer file needs to have a new part of the Composer file, and we push that change. It&#8217;s going to cause a merge conflict with everybody&#8217;s repository that didn&#8217;t already have that.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s a little bit of a headache for us, but for the user it&#8217;s obviously a net win. Those sorts of things give me pause a little bit, as somebody who is now at least partially responsible for, thousands of people running sites that use Composer. But in terms of like individual users and stuff, I think that Composer has a really good thing going and has a good ecosystem around it.</p>



<p>[00:38:16] Nathan Wrigley: Just to give us some insight into how you are using it. Your work at Pantheon and all the other companies that you&#8217;ve mentioned that you&#8217;ve worked at. Is this something that is just typical? This is just part of the process. Everything is built with Composer bolted in. Or is this something that you cherry pick? Okay, this one needs it, this one doesn&#8217;t. Is it basically everywhere, all the time?</p>



<p>[00:38:38] Chris Reynolds: When I was at WebDev, which admittedly is many years ago now, we didn&#8217;t use Composer. We could have benefited from using Composer. And I think they&#8217;re probably using Composer now. I don&#8217;t know that for sure, but based on the types of projects that they&#8217;re doing, and types of things that I see them working on, I think that&#8217;re probably doing it now.</p>



<p>When I was at Human Made, it was just there. Everything that we did had Composer as part of it. And it was a sort of a fundamental part of how projects were built. And obviously like Altis is Composer. It&#8217;s a Composer built thing. It&#8217;s entirely built on top of Composer. One of the things that gives it its stability, but also if you look at the documentation for Altis or things, it&#8217;s always lagging, and is always going to be lagging a little bit behind the latest WordPress release.</p>



<p>And for enterprise, that&#8217;s fine. Because they&#8217;re not concerned about the major or minor point releases. They&#8217;re concerned that their site is secure and it&#8217;s updated and it&#8217;s getting those patch releases. So with each new Altis version that typically aligns with a new WordPress version it sort of, when I was there anyway, the release cycle for Altis followed by a month or so, offset from the last WordPress release, so that they could make sure that the next WordPress version was part of the next Altis version.</p>



<p>[00:39:48] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so should somebody have been interested in this, you know, their interest has been peaked by everything that you&#8217;ve been saying. Where&#8217;s some good resources? I&#8217;m looking at getcomposer.org and there&#8217;s a get started link right at the top. That seems like it might be a decent place to start. But maybe there&#8217;s more, how to describe it? Maybe there&#8217;s some things which would help a WordPresser as well.</p>



<p>[00:40:13] Chris Reynolds: I definitely would point towards the Roots Bedrock Project as being a really good place if you&#8217;re looking at wanting to have WordPress as built as dependency, I think they&#8217;ve got a really good framework. And at Human Made, we were doing that thing, but we weren&#8217;t using Bedrock. So it would be a little bit more difficult to come up with those ideas and that system and that framework independently. And that&#8217;s one of the things I think that you would get from the Roots ecosystem. So definitely yeah the, just the get Composer to learn about it and to look at the documentation, to dig into it.</p>



<p>And then from a WordPress standpoint specifically, I would definitely look into Bedrock to understand like how that works. And they&#8217;ve got a thriving community as well around that. And, a whole Patreon thing and Discord channel and whatnot, so that you can actually talk to human beings and get some amount of support.</p>



<p>[00:41:02] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah I&#8217;ll make sure to link to everything that you sent in my direction into the show notes. But, if anybody wants to check those out, you can see them on the WP Tavern website. Search for this episode, and you&#8217;ll be able to see all of those links there. If anybody wants to link to you Chris, if anybody&#8217;s been interested in, just think they&#8217;d like bit of a helping hand. They&#8217;d like to understand this a little bit more from, from the horse&#8217;s mouth if you like. Where do we find you?</p>



<p>[00:41:27] Chris Reynolds: Online I&#8217;m jazz sequence most places. Frequently jazz sequence with a three. So j a z z s 3 q u e n c e. That&#8217;s my Twitter handle and Instagram, various other things. I am at @jazzsequence@mstdn.social on Mastodon. And, my website is jazzsequence.com without the three, cause I like to, be confusing. And LinkedIn and places like that. But the Twitters and lately Mastodon, and those sorts of social places where you&#8217;ll probably get my attention.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m also, you know, on the WordPress Core Slack and like I said I live in Salt Lake City so, we haven&#8217;t had very many WordCamps in the last couple years. There&#8217;s some weird pandemic thing happening, but when those things do happen I often will try to visit the things that are, within driving range. I&#8217;m hoping to be at at US in National Harbor this year. So, maybe I&#8217;ll see folks there.</p>



<p>[00:42:16] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Chris Reynolds, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. I appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:42:20] Chris Reynolds: Yeah, no worries.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://twitter.com/jazzs3quence">Chris Reynolds</a>.</p>



<p>Chris has been working with WordPress for over 15 years. He’s freelanced, worked with Event Espresso, WebDevStudios, Human Made and is now at Pantheon as a CMS Ecosystem engineer, and WordPress technical lead. He’s spoken at WordCamps and at OpenWest about all aspects of WordPress.</p>



<p>I suspect that many of the people listening to this podcast are not using Composer in their WordPress workflow, and to Chris, this is something that you should think about implementing, and he’s here to explain why.</p>



<p>Chris starts off by talking about the kind of projects that he’s worked on, and how he found WordPress.</p>



<p>We then get into the weeds of what Composer is, and the benefits that it brings. It’s essentially a package management system and makes it easy to set dependencies for your project and manage them within Composer.</p>



<p>Why would you want to do that though? If you’re just building brochure websites, then perhaps you don’t, but if your project is more complex, then this might save you a lot of time.</p>



<p>Chris describes scenarios in which he thinks Composer is a good fit; if you want to add in specific packages, and how those packages are managed and updated.</p>



<p>He explains how you can install Composer depending on the OS that you’re working with, and how it structures the files and directories that are created.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast, we talk about how Composer can be useful for teams, and Chris’ use of Composer to keep everyone clear on how the project is structured.</p>



<p>If you’ve thought about using a package management system such as Composer, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://www.hotscripts.com/">Hot Scripts</a></p>



<p><a href="https://eventespresso.com/">Event Espresso</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/">Pluralsight</a></p>



<p><a href="https://webdevstudios.com/">WebDevStudios</a></p>



<p><a href="https://humanmade.com/">Human Made</a></p>



<p><a href="https://pantheon.io/">Pantheon</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.npmjs.com/">npm</a></p>



<p><a href="https://brew.sh/">Homebrew</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wpackagist.org/">WordPress Packagist</a></p>



<p><a href="https://packagist.org/">Packagist</a></p>



<p><a href="https://roots.io/bedrock/">Bedrock by the Roots Team</a></p>



<p><a href="https://getcomposer.org/">Composer</a></p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/jazzs3quence">Chris&#8217; Twitter account</a></p>



<p><a href="https://mstdn.social/@jazzsequence">Chris&#8217; Mastodon account</a></p>



<p><a href="https://jazzsequence.com/">Chris&#8217; website</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Mar 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60:"WordPress.org blog: Introducing the WordPress Developer Blog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14649";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/introducing-the-wordpress-developer-blog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4659:"<p>With much activity happening in the WordPress development space every day, keeping up-to-date with the latest updates can be challenging. The new <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/">WordPress Developer Blog</a> is a developer-focused resource to help you stay on top of the latest software features, tutorials, and learning materials relevant to the open source project.</p>



<p>This blog is the culmination of a community effort that began last year. Formed by experienced WordPress community members and developers, the <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/about/">editorial group</a> has since worked on a wide range of content already available—from theme and block development tutorials to tips and tricks for leveraging WordPress in the site editing era.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A new home for developers</h2>



<p>As a complementary resource to the WordPress documentation, the Developer Blog aims to provide a shared space to stay informed of development-related updates, keep up with ongoing discussions and ideas, and explore cutting-edge use cases.</p>



<p>In other words, <strong>consider it as a central hub for developers and </strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2020/05/01/care-and-influence-a-theory-about-the-wordpress-community/"><strong>extenders</strong></a> of different backgrounds and skill levels to learn with quality content from reliable sources, share knowledge, and drive WordPress development forward.</p>



<p>True to the open source way, the blog will likely evolve. As its editors and readers learn and create more content, it will adapt in response to the needs of community members like you.</p>



<p>Everyone is welcome to chime in on-topic discussions, share ideas or contribute. <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/how-to-contribute/">Learn more about how to get involved</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What about the content?</h2>



<p>Content on the WordPress Developer Blog covers many topics, including tutorials on <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/category/themes/">theme development</a>, <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/category/plugins/">plugins</a>, and <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/category/block-development/">block development</a>. You can also expect posts on WordPress APIs, best practices for working with WordPress, updates on upcoming releases, and <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/category/learning/">learning resources</a> for beginners and seasoned developers.</p>



<p>These articles offer a good hint at what&#8217;s already in store for you:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/17/demystifying-home-and-posts-templates-in-wordpress-theme-development/">Demystifying home and posts templates in WordPress theme development</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/creating-themes-from-a-pattern-first-mindset/">Creating themes from a pattern-first mindset</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/static-vs-dynamic-blocks-whats-the-difference/">Static vs. dynamic blocks: What’s the difference?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/creating-custom-block-styles-in-wordpress-themes/">Creating custom block styles in WordPress themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/03/whats-new-for-developers-march-2023/">What’s new for developers? (March 2023)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Sounds interesting? </h2>



<p><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/#subscribe">Subscribe to the Developer Blog</a> to keep up with the latest content in the WordPress development space.</p>



<p><em>Props for content and peer review <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>chanthaboune</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>rmartinezduque</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mburridge/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>mburridge</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/marybaum/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>marybaum</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bph/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>bph</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/greenshady/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>greenshady</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webcommsat</a>.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Mar 2023 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Chloe Bringmann";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"WPTavern: The Mercantile Reopens with Limited Edition 20th Anniversary WordPress Swag";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142884";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"https://wptavern.com/the-mercantile-reopens-with-limited-edition-20th-anniversary-wordpress-swag";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1527:"<img />



<p><a href="https://mercantile.wordpress.org/">The Mercantile</a>, WordPress&#8217; official swag store, was closed for updates but has relaunched with the highly anticipated limited edition <a href="https://mercantile.wordpress.org/product-category/wp20/">20th anniversary swag</a>. </p>



<p>In celebration of the milestone, the store has added an array of keepsakes, including sweatshirts, pennants, a &#8220;Code is Poetry&#8221; t-shirt, stainless steel tumbler, pet bandana, commemorative sticker sheets, and more. What WordPress swag collector can pass up the WP20 Wapuu keychain?</p>



<p>Unlike years past, where the swag store seemed like its own separate site, this relaunch makes the store a  more natural part of the WordPress project&#8217;s website. It runs on WooCommerce and shares the same <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-news-gets-a-new-design">updated design</a> as the rest of WordPress.org with the vibrant blue that has made its way into the 20th anniversary logos. </p>



<p>The limited edition swag is available while supplies last. Unfortunately, international shipping rates are hefty, a complaint the store has received for years. It makes it cost-prohibitive to order a single t-shirt or sweatshirt outside the U.S. when the shipping costs twice as much or more than the product. Hopefully, this year&#8217;s docket of WordCamp events will provide other avenues for distributing 20th anniversary swag to WordPress&#8217; global community through well-stocked pop-up shops.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Mar 2023 03:21:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"WPTavern: Admin Menu Tree Page View 2.8 Now Supports All Public Post Types ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142881";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://wptavern.com/admin-menu-tree-page-view-2-8-now-supports-all-public-post-types";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2211:"<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/admin-menu-tree-page-view/">Admin Menu Tree Page View plugin</a>, which adds a tree-view layout of content in the WordPress admin, has been refactored to support more content types. The plugin is an admin utility similar to <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/hierarchy/">Hierarchy</a> or the commercial <a href="https://organizewp.com/">OrganizeWP</a> plugin that reworks the CMS to show content in one place, but it offers a simpler set of features for free with no ads or upsells.  These types of plugins are valuable tools on larger, CMS-heavy WordPress sites.</p>



<p>Previously, the Admin Menu Tree Page View plugin focused on pages, allowing users to better visualize the page hierarchy/tree structure, add pages directly after or inside another post, and easily reorder pages via drag and drop.</p>



<p><a href="https://getbutterfly.com/admin-menu-tree-page-view-2-8-refactoring-update/">Version 2.8</a> adds support for all public post types &#8211; posts, pages, and custom post types, which was a long requested feature. The plugin&#8217;s author, WordPress developer Ciprian Popescu, said adding more post types made the dashboard menu unmanageable and the backend slow, requiring him to update the plugin to us a top-level menu page.</p>



<p>&#8220;The solution here was to move the pages to a top level menu page,&#8221; Popescu said. &#8220;This increased the &#8216;one click away&#8217; feature to &#8216;two clicks away,&#8217; which is not a bad trade-off in my opinion, especially when all public post types are now available in a hierarchical tree layout. Having a separate page now removed the need for collapsing the child <code>&lt;ul></code> elements, as the purpose of this plugin is to quickly see all your pages in a bird’s eye view manner.&#8221;</p>



<img />



<p>Version 2.8 also removes some redundant features, cookies, and JavaScript resources, as the expand/collapse functionality is no longer necessary. Next on the roadmap for future releases Popescu is working on adding caching for post types, removing the jQuery and jQueryUI dependency, and improving dragging and dropping to work inside child elements. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Mar 2023 23:10:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14685";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4880:"<p>It’s the final countdown: the third (and last) scheduled <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/glossary/#release-candidate">release candidate</a> (RC3) for WordPress 6.2 is ready! </p>



<p>The WordPress 6.2 release is scheduled for March 28, 2023—just one week away! Now is your last opportunity to test it before the general release.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Just tuning in now? Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-1/">WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement</a>.</p>



<p>Thanks to all the Beta and RC testers who have assisted in this release. Since <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-2/">RC2</a> was released on March 14, there have been about 21 issues resolved in <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=closed&changetime=03%2F15%2F2023..03%2F21%2F2023&milestone=6.2&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Trac</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.2">GitHub</a>.</p>



<p>Your feedback and help in filing bug reports keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s critical work and a great way to contribute to the project.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to install RC3 for testing</h2>



<p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development. </strong>Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can test WordPress 6.2 RC3 in three ways:</p>



<p><strong>Option 1</strong>: Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</p>



<p><strong>Option 2</strong>: Direct download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.2-RC3.zip">RC3 version (zip)</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Option 3</strong>: Use the following WP-CLI command:</p>



<p><code>wp core update --version=6.2-RC3</code></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A shout out to plugin and theme developers</h2>



<p>Your products are the reason WordPress does so many things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC3, make sure you update the “<em>Tested up to”</em> version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forums</a>.</p>



<p>Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/09/wordpress-6-2-field-guide/">WordPress 6.2 Field Guide</a> for more details about the major changes in this release.</p>



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



<p>Do you speak a language other than English? <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev">Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.</a>&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Keep WordPress bug-free—help with testing</h2>



<p>Without your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">this detailed guide</a> can help you get started.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file one on WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Release the haiku</h2>



<p>Wow, we’re oh so close<br />Test, test. Get it out the door.<br />Please no RC 4.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-right"><em>Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurlittle/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>laurlittle</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/marybaum/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>marybaum</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>audrasjb</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>cbringmann</a> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webcommsat</a></em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Mar 2023 17:43:07 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Jonathan Pantani";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: Building Community and Employee Engagement with James Giroux";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74641";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"https://dothewoo.io/building-community-and-employee-engagement/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:421:"<p>James Giroux from TeamWP joins us to talk about life as a community manager and building employee engagement with TeamWP.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/building-community-and-employee-engagement/">Building Community and Employee Engagement with James Giroux</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Mar 2023 10:21:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"Akismet: Version 5.1 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=2453";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://blog.akismet.com/2023/03/20/version-5-1-of-the-akismet-wordpress-plugin-is-now-available/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:724:"<p>Version 5.1 of <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the Akismet plugin for WordPress</a> is now available. This update contains the following improvements:</p>



<ul>
<li>We removed some unnecessary limit notices from /wp-admin/ pages.</li>



<li>We&#8217;re now using post taxonomies to improve spam detection.</li>



<li>In order to avoid inadvertent exposure, API keys are no longer used in the stats iframe URLs.</li>
</ul>



<p>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 <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the WordPress plugins directory</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Mar 2023 19:37:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Christopher Finke";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:164:"WPTavern: CloudFest Hackathon 2023 Kickstarts Innovative WordPress Projects: VS Code Extension for In-Browser Development, WapuuGotchi Gamification Plugin, and More";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142851";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:172:"https://wptavern.com/cloudfest-hackathon-2023-kickstarts-innovative-wordpress-projects-vs-code-extension-for-in-browser-development-wapuugotchi-gamification-plugin-and-more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9378:"<p>More than 6,000 people are attending <a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/">CloudFest</a> in Europa-Park, Germany, this week. A strong contingent of WordPress developers and contributors are among them. During the <a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/hackathon">Hackathon</a> portion of the event, web professionals gather for a friendly competition, tackling problems for existing not-for-profit, OSS projects, creating solutions with a concentrated effort at a quicker pace than remote collaboration usually allows.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WordPress running in VS Code!!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHack2023?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHack2023</a> <a href="https://t.co/qKQeQBZClW">pic.twitter.com/qKQeQBZClW</a></p>&mdash; daniel (@dbchhbr) <a href="https://twitter.com/dbchhbr/status/1637491441453735937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>Several WordPress-related projects have been put into action at the Hackathon, including the following: </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/mariadb-health-checks-in-wordpress">MariaDB Health Checks in WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/privacy-focused-web-analytics-plugin">Statify: Privacy-Focused Web Analytics Plugin</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/a-search-engine-for-wordpress-developers">docs_dangit: A search engine for WordPress developers</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/wapuugotchi">Wapuugotchi</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/wappspector-cli-utility-to-scan-a-hosting-server-to-identify-used-cms-ecommerce-top-frameworks-used-in-the-websites">Wappspector</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/eco-mode-reduce-outgoing-network-traffic-of-your-wordpress-server">Eco-mode – reduce outgoing network traffic of your WordPress server</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/wordpress-runtime-vulnerability-analysis">WordPress Runtime Vulnerability Analysis</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/in-browser-wordpress-development-environment">In-browser WordPress development environment</a></li>
</ul>



<p>Automattic engineer Daniel Bachhuber <a href="https://developer.wordpress.com/2023/03/20/cfhack2023-wordpress-in-vs-code/">published</a> a preview of the in-browser WordPress development environment enabled by an experimental VS Code extension that uses <a href="https://webassembly.org/">WebAssembly</a> to run WordPress entirely in the browser.</p>



<p>&#8220;Forget spending hours setting up a local development environment at your next Contributor Day,&#8221; Bachhuber said. &#8220;Simply install the <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WordPressPlayground.wordpress-playground">WordPress Playground VS Code extension</a>, run &#8216;Launch WordPress Playground&#8217; from the command launcher, and you’ll have a <s>fully</s> mostly functional WordPress installation right inside your editor.&#8221;</p>



<p>Bachhuber emphasized that the extension was built for demonstration purposes but is <a href="https://github.com/danielbachhuber/wordpress-playground-vscode">available on GitHub</a> for anyone who wants to contribute or report bugs. A more in-depth tour of the extension is available on <a href="https://developer.wordpress.com/2023/03/20/cfhack2023-wordpress-in-vs-code/">Automattic&#8217;s developer blog</a>.</p>



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

</div>



<p>In addition to the VS code previewer for WordPress plugins, the Hackathon team working with WordPress Playground is also <a href="https://twitter.com/adamzielin/status/1637457845141512194">experimenting</a> with using the block editor in the browser and working with the Terminal and PHP, wp-cli, and PHPUnit &#8211; all in the browser. </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHack2023?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHack2023</a> Project 1: WordPress code editor, cli, and preview in the browser — with offline mode! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHack?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHack</a> <a href="https://t.co/KdFzwq9IaJ">https://t.co/KdFzwq9IaJ</a></p>&mdash; Adam Zieliński (@adamzielin) <a href="https://twitter.com/adamzielin/status/1637769196128858114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>The WapuuGotchi project, which aims to gamify WordPress with a customizable Wapuu, notifications, and rewards, has its own <a href="https://twitter.com/wapuugotchi">Twitter account</a> and <a href="https://wapuugotchi.com/">website</a> where those interested can follow along with their progress.</p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://wapuugotchi.com/hackathon-wrap-up-unveiling-the-future-of-wordpress">WapuuGotchi Hackathon Wrap-Up</a>



<p>&#8220;The audience was captivated as we demonstrated the customizable Wapuu assistant, which can be tailored to suit individual preferences by selecting unique outfits and accessories,&#8221; WapuuGotchi design contributor Dennis Hipp said.</p>



<p>&#8220;We also highlighted WapuuGotchi’s backend interaction capabilities, showing how it can guide users through updates, provide helpful tips, and offer reminders for important tasks. The presentation concluded with an invitation for Plugin authors to collaborate with us and integrate their Plugins into the WapuuGotchi ecosystem.&#8221;</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f469-1f3fb-200d-1f4bb.png" alt="👩🏻‍💻" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2728.png" alt="✨" class="wp-smiley" /> Day 3, the last day and the final sprint! Everyone in the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WapuuGotchi?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WapuuGotchi</a> team is working hand in hand to complete the final steps before the presentation.  We are looking forward to sharing our results with you! <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2728.png" alt="✨" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f468-1f3fc-200d-1f4bb.png" alt="👨🏼‍💻" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHack2023?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHack2023</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/aprox7?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@aprox7</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/joomla?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Joomla</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TinaTO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TinaTO</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/mpmike?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mpmike</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/cloudfest?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cloudfest</a> <a href="https://t.co/9VZy1KSAKg">pic.twitter.com/9VZy1KSAKg</a></p>&mdash; WapuuGotchi (@wapuugotchi) <a href="https://twitter.com/wapuugotchi/status/1637748796938506240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>The Wappspector project, which aims to create a CLI utility to analyze the file structure of a web hosting server and identify the frameworks and CMS used in the websites hosted on it, made significant progress during the Hackathon. The app added seven more CMS identifiers and will soon be ready for testing on control panels. The app focuses on CMS and e-commerce applications but will also have an extendable mechanism allowing hosting providers to customize it to suit their needs.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Seven more CMS identifiers added to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WappSpector?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WappSpector</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/cloudfest?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Cloudfest</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHACK?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHACK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CFHACK2023?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CFHACK2023</a> &#8211; in addition to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Joomla?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Joomla</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Drupal?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Drupal</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Prestashop?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Prestashop</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TYPO3?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TYPO3</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Composer?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Composer</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Laravel?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Laravel</a> are now identifiable. Our app will soon be ready for testing on control panels. <a href="https://t.co/f26qLFiEqV">pic.twitter.com/f26qLFiEqV</a></p>&mdash; cPanel (@cPanel) <a href="https://twitter.com/cPanel/status/1637399014873202688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>CloudFest 2023 added a new <a href="https://www.cloudfest.com/wordpress-day">WordPress Day</a>, dedicated to helping internet infrastructure professionals learn more about WordPress&#8217;s footprint and ecosystem, and hear from some of the top WordPress plugin developers and security experts. The event was held earlier today on March 20, and featured 12 sessions on WordPress.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Mar 2023 18:59:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"Gutenberg Times: OpenAI Block, WooCommerce 7.5, Patterns and Flexible Table Block —Weekend Edition #247";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=23605";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:110:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/openai-block-woocommerce-7-5-patterns-and-flexible-table-block-weekend-edition-247/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17466:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Containers are on my mind. In one of those, our household will be shipped next week. 🚚 We will be AirBnB-ing for a few weeks. Exciting times. </p>



<p>I need to sort through some paperwork and create the inventory for the insurance. Sorry for the short intro, today. </p>



<p>Wish me luck! </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




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



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




<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> joined <strong>DocPop</strong> on the <em>Torque Social Hour</em>. They discussed WordPress 20-year Anniversary celebration, WordPress 6.2 &#8211; Phase 2 to Phase 3. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T0LgQP7M4A"><strong>Torque Social Hour: Preparing for WP20 Celebrations</strong></a>. In this episode, Haden Chomphosy  told us about the upcoming plans for WordPress’s 20th Anniversary. They also talked about WP version 6.2, the recent acquisition of the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress, and Plugin Madness 2023.</p>



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



<p>It&#8217;s release candidate week in WordPress land: <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-2/"><strong>WordPress 6.2 RC 2</strong></a> was released on March 14, 2023, and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v15.4.0-rc.1"><strong>Gutenberg 15.4 RC 1</strong></a> is also available for testing. </p>



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



<p>WordPress 6.2 comes with a browse mode of the Site Editor. This includes a black left menu bar that blends in and out depending on if you are editing a template or browsing the menu. Until RC 2, &#8220;Navigation&#8221; was one of the menu items on the left admin menu, it was, however, pulled before this week&#8217;s RC 2. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> summarized the discussion around this issue in their post: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/fyi-navigation-section-of-new-site-editor-experienced-removed-for-6-2-rc-2/"><strong>FYI: Navigation section of new Site Editor experienced removed for 6.2 RC 2</strong></a> and shared also the list of issues this feature has. Each one a minor item in the sum it wasn&#8217;t up to the quality contributors aimed for. </p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-80-wordpress-6-2-preview-gutenberg-15-2-and-15-3/">Gutenberg Changelog #80 – WordPress 6.2 Preview, Gutenberg 15.2 and 15.3</a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and special guest Rich Tabor  </p>
</div></div>



<p>WPEngine&#8217;s one-day virtual developer conference DE{CODE} will take place next week <strong>March 21 through 23rd, 2023. DE{CODE} </strong>will be broadcast in three global time zones and anticipates over 5,000 attendees in its fourth year, launching in 2020. <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong> and <strong>Matias Ventura</strong> will discuss the future of WordPress and the rapid innovations in the block editor relied upon by millions of WordPress developers worldwide. It&#8217;s also part of the 20-year anniversary celebration of WordPress . Have a look at the <a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/b1c1e30f-2c73-4abb-a609-52afaed68717/websitePage:289e81f7-3e30-49de-9510-696ad303d192"><strong>schedule of all the great sessions at DE{CODE} 2023</strong></a></p>



<img />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> was a guest of <strong>Rob Cairns</strong> for the latest episode. They talk All about 6.2 on <a href="https://stunningdigitalmarketing.com/episode-307-wordpress-6-2-with-anne-mccarthy/">Stunning Digital Marketing</a> podcast. Highlights of the show: </p>



<ul>
<li>What is coming in WordPress 6.2 .</li>



<li>&nbsp;The coolest features in WordPress 6.2</li>



<li>&nbsp;When are we going to update the WordPress Admin Dashboard?</li>



<li>&nbsp;When are we going to fix the Media Library?</li>
</ul>



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



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong>, shows off the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERIz3diT9Sk"><strong>Side Editor and Block Themes</strong></a> again via YouTube. He uses both to rebuild Austin Kleon&#8217;s website, using the newest WordPress version.  <br /><em>Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going.</em></p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/03/14/woocommerce-7-5-released/">WooCommerce 7.5</a></strong> has been released, and the post highlights that Woo Blocks are ready for the new feature of the StyleBook coming in WordPress 6.2, Blocks have been rewritten, so users can use the core design tools for changing the look and feel, the block can be easier styled by block themes, and new blocks to manage the store can now be found in the inserter of the block editor. </p>



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> of WPTavern has more details: <a href="https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-5-0-introduces-3-new-blocks-expands-support-for-global-styles"><strong>WooCommerce 7.5.0 Introduces 3 New Blocks, Expands Support for Global Styles</strong></a></p>



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



<p>Learn.WordPress Tutorial: <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/displaying-testimonials-on-your-website/"><strong>Displaying testimonials on your website</strong></a> with<strong> Wes Theron</strong>. This tutorial will look at adding a testimonial pattern and installing a new block from the Block Directory to your site.</p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/tetsuaki_hamano">Aki Hamano</a></strong>, a Gutenberg contributor from Japan, released a new version of his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/flexible-table-block/"><strong>Flexible Table Block plugin</strong></a>, with the main changes </p>



<ul>
<li>Tested on WordPress6.2</li>



<li>Redesigned global settings modal </li>



<li>apply stripe color to tbody only </li>



<li>Preserve rowspan/colspan when converting to/from core table blocks </li>
</ul>



<p></p>



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



<p><strong>Mike McAliste</strong>r acclaims: <a href="https://olliewp.com/patterns-are-gonna-be-a-game-changer-for-wordpress/"><strong>Patterns are gonna be a game changer for WordPress</strong></a>, and he tells you why, after a recap of the genesis of Block Patterns:  &#8221;&nbsp;instead of designing a page from scratch, WordPress creators can now lean on patterns to quickly prototype or design their full website in the new WordPress Site Editor with little or no code involved.&#8221; McAlister also has concrete vision on how patterns could be a bit more intelligent: </p>



<ul>
<li>Go global: change once, update to all places where patterns were added.</li>



<li>Pattern locking features</li>



<li>Light/dark version of the same pattern.</li>
</ul>



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



<p>If that topic interests you more, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> wrote a post on the Developer Blog, introducing <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/creating-themes-from-a-pattern-first-mindset/"><strong>Creating Themes from a Pattern-first mindset</strong></a></p>



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



<p><strong>Ganesh Dahal</strong>&nbsp;wrote on CSS Tricks on <a href="https://css-tricks.com/managing-fonts-in-wordpress-block-themes/"><strong>Managing Fonts in WordPress Block Themes</strong></a>. &#8220;Block themes can indeed use Google Fonts, but the process for registering them is way different from what you might have done before in classic themes.&#8221; he explained. </p>



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




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




<p>On the WordPress Developer Blog, <strong>Daisy Olse</strong>n takes you along when she shows you  <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/03/block-theme-templates-the-easy-way-to-build-an-elegant-grid-of-posts/"><strong>Block theme templates: the easy way to build an elegant grid of posts</strong></a>. <em>&#8220;WordPress block themes let you lay out your home page in countless ways, with endless flexibility. To get you started and show you just a few of the possibilities, this tutorial will help you build a magazine-style home page that shows several recent posts and then a traditional post list for inner pages.</em>&#8220;Olsen summarized. Olsen also live-streams regularly <a href="httpa://twitch.com/daisyonwp">on Twitch</a>: Next event: Friday, March 31, 2023 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM Topic: <a href="http://clicks.meetup.com/ls/click?upn=XbaZ37larFA-2FuV5MohrYpdrra25MtI4CzodbRR1Rd1lcKVfFkaiAkMoxUvY-2FRvTYasrl05OpUEx72RVyvunbnfpl8aYBoogyprZFTIpUpo22NL-2FoQHUOrtYIfxI6PjJVQFCmp-2B2S-2Fq4FTLYKBM-2BmtFcLYWugMTX9zP0bhY6zZ3DLzmpF0KtJjZgT2sqIJWMLmpmnqQgZd0lq2xEArTmYCpw3GjujFvusA8j5HeNyemAoWMY12BDWC9aKbhEdL43wbmWxsdhlCn-2BVgCcoZjW3jRMKI9i3RSODpkr-2BEywOkyA-3DTYl__J40Cm482JAfcu64pauD5epBU-2Bh0Rd-2FPWHzdxWXz1rewkAa1qNT6zJlNeHNYZFAj0LnD-2Bb1AhQQSz4XVimu5ikL4v4OY5PmVLKfMIPDvE6BMosM9bkdqfAXKOIvxARLwcEaswvLfrjbcOYXZ6C3kRPGZOIfCYy917Fg5QeBskFMUyf3q4tnOMOPPjOqOaBMCUzD1FgXVOIMNE3e3r-2BhQukqfMyS-2FyScFE4d0bJew1heuXhcM4totKIVcUclpyh59sJALeLnEd7rm1-2Fqjh48JlQHN5Mu3Av-2FsH9ygknQvsc5x0A0KIrnZTxG3h2GrtpO7CVUdQl4Bc6wM2zHjt9-2B787S0FNwx7tr-2BI0gnbVhh3msWhB3gwO8L9YvSr-2BK297Bd2xRLzyP5phQS6MLNc8DjP1QvXnZNFPgnkJBi01ij4rj1YPcsSY-2Fo0gaDXyr-2FQVIUGP-2FQRg-2BDysOhbjHIF9IWpTizgKY1H8lY112ok0qu4wmRXXbjeFAqRqDstHdKbn1To22RrqAWiHnuz8gFPcdlUc2AGP-2BiO7jlJY-2BMMFkuaCYYcqV97OLC4u05JDD2KYzbB3loEraPvrnPo83nKJ4w-2B4GQleteGxeO-2BNZkBi5jVzF93Gz-2FQ41-2FqSCjNgHh46QPbQonA1BfYS3KYXiaPoCQTtqTjxDRRvuZOgrx6MeiNm0WMa-2BvS3qV0FFYDI54etDZF01xqafJyfVV0kXDBt7dNp0zsnZNMsTYIVXwErz8HEozy6mQquv99qo2jE-2FsMC7WE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Block Themes and WordPress: Exploring WordPress 6.2</a></p>



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p>In his latest recording, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> wrapped up <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88c6z1XEvG0"><strong>building an OpenAI block for WordPress</strong></a>. In a previous edition, Welcher built an OpenAI integrated block that can generate images for use in our content. In this show, he turned it into a plugin that is part of the editor interface and inserted image blocks automatically after uploading the selected image. </p>



<p>If you missed the earlier parts of this series, they are also available on YouTube</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQS69SglWOg">Integrating OpenAI with a custom block. Part One</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIJwXEXt7xE">Integrating OpenAI with a custom block. Part Two</a></li>
</ul>



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



<p>Using the WordPress REST API is how block editor development interacts with data. <strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong> created a series of Workshops on how to use the API.</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/01/13/lets-code-using-the-wordpress-rest-api/"><strong>Using the WP REST API</strong></a>: Learn how to use the WP REST API to interact with existing WordPress data.</li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/01/20/lets-code-interacting-with-the-wp-rest-api/"><strong>Interacting with the WP REST API</strong></a>: Learn how to interact add and delete data. The tutorial also looks at a useful developer tool for testing endpoints.</li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/01/27/lets-code-wp-rest-api-updates-custom-fields-and-authentication/"><strong>WP REST API updates, custom fields, and authentication</strong></a>: Learn how to use the REST API and Backbone.js to make update requests, add/update custom fields, and authenticate requests when logged out.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/02/03/lets-code-wp-rest-api-modifying-responses/">WP REST API – modifying responses</a>:</strong> Learn one of the ways to extend the REST API by modifying responses.</li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/02/10/lets-code-wp-rest-api-custom-routes-and-endpoints/">WP REST API – custom routes and endpoints</a>: Learn how to create custom routes and endpoints and test them with Postman.</li>
</ul>



<p>I also highly recommend watching <strong>K. Adam White</strong>&#8216;s talk at WordCamp Asia on&nbsp;<a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/session/getting-the-most-out-of-the-rest-api/"><strong>Getting the most out of the REST API</strong></a>. During the talk, White renamed it to&nbsp;<em>“Getting the most out of WordPress when you’re writing Block Editor code”.</em> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/vrDwB7iuHL8?t=2299">Recording</a>)&nbsp;(<a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PQVcTzcUP2xRbwjEjqo8VENxU7fiDBtz8U7R4cA0-IE/edit#slide=id.g1f27001dabd_0_8"><strong>Slidedeck</strong></a>)</p>



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




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



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




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



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



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




<p>Featured Image: &#8220;Container&#8221; by Izabela Reimers is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />



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



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



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 18 Mar 2023 05:33:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"WPTavern: WordPress Launches Wapuu Coloring Giveaway to Celebrate Upcoming 20th Anniversary";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142834";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:102:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-launches-wapuu-coloring-giveaway-to-celebrate-upcoming-20th-anniversary";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2364:"<p>Wapuu lovers who are looking for a relaxing weekend activity will want to check out WordPress&#8217; recently launched <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/wapuu-coloring-giveaway-style-your-own-party-wapuu/">Wapuu Coloring Giveaway</a>. The challenge is to style your own 20th anniversary party Wapuu using crayons, markers, colored pencils, pastels, or even digital drawing tools.</p>



<p>Three random entries will be selected (which is why it&#8217;s called a giveaway and not a contest) to receive limited edition swag:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>You have a chance to win one of three WP20 Swag Kits, complete with a variety of unique anniversary goods. From lapel pins to stickers, and some surprise mystery items, they’ll be a memorable collection for this milestone moment in WordPress history. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Participants will need to download the Wapuu coloring set, which comes in different file types (.pdf, .png, .svg, and .ai). Finished wapuu coloring creations can be shared on Twitter using the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WapuuWP20">#WapuuWP20</a> hashtag to enter the giveaway. So far there are just a handful of party wapuus that have been submitted via Twitter, but email is another option if you want to send it privately or don&#8217;t have a Twitter account.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Long way from the Himalayan kingdom Bhutan, the land of gross national happiness with a population of 700,000 plus, would like to congratulate WordPress Communities worldwide in advance for our upcoming huge celebration on making it to the 20TH WordPress Anniversary. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WapuuWP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WapuuWP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ml1Wz7m8nx">pic.twitter.com/Ml1Wz7m8nx</a></p>&mdash; Ugyen Dorji Organizing #WCAsia (@ugyendzodorji) <a href="https://twitter.com/ugyendzodorji/status/1636280709890576385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>Entrants must be 18 years old to win, but the coloring page is fun for kids even if they won&#8217;t have the chance to win swag. WordPress will celebrate its 20th anniversary on May 27, but the deadline to submit wapuu creations is April 17, 2023, at 03:59 UTC. Winners will be contacted via Twitter or email.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Mar 2023 21:54:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Buffalo 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3163106";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/03/wordcamp-buffalo-2023/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1802:"<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/empireoflight/"><img /></a>WordCamp Buffalo 2023 logo. Design by Ben Dunkle.



<p>Buffalo again will host the region’s WordCamp for bloggers and web designers and developers of all skill levels. Novices are very welcome. WordCamp Buffalo will be held Saturday, May 6, 2023.</p>



<p>Registration opens at 8:00am. Sessions begin at 9 a.m. and continue through 5 p.m. This year’s WordCamp will be held at Ken-Ton Elmwood Commons, 3200 Elmwood Ave Suite 110, Kenmore, NY 14217. Tickets are required in advance.</p>



<p>The $25 ticket cost covers WordCamp Buffalo swag, morning coffee, lunch, and the evenings’s after-party food. Participants are strongly encouraged to bring their laptops or tablets. Ticket purchase and program details are available at <a href="https://buffalo.wordcamp.org/2023">buffalo.wordcamp.org/2023</a>. The capacity for this event is about 120 people, so getting tickets early is advised.</p>



<p>WordCamps are held worldwide, locally run and purposely at a low cost for accessibility to all. WordCamp Buffalo is dedicated to WordPress, blogging and web facility. WordCamps are sponsored by WordPress, the open-source, free, not-for-profit platform for individuals, groups and businesses to build their own blogs and websites. WordPress.org began in 2003. Its administrators call it the “largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.”</p>



<p>Similar to previous years, Buffalo’s 2023 WordCamp will divide its workshops along two tracks, with sessions for every ability and level of use.</p>



<p>Speakers will include WordPress users from Buffalo, Rochester, and beyond, with experience ranging from user/blogger to advanced developer.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Mar 2023 14:30:13 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Michelle Frechette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Entebbe 2023: An Amazing Recap";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3163170";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/03/wordcamp-entebbe-2023-an-amazing-recap/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4374:"<p>WordCamp Entebbe, a two-day event that took place on the 10th and 11th of March, 2023, was a resounding success and was attended by over 200 people. The event, which was focused on the WordPress content management system, drew attendees from across Uganda and beyond. However, what made this event stand out was its commitment to gender diversity in the tech industry.</p>



<p>The organizers of WordCamp Entebbe made a concerted effort to ensure that women were well-represented at the event. The gender diversity program featured female speakers and student attendees. This program was designed to inspire more women to pursue careers in technology, and it proved to be a huge success.</p>



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image2-1024x683.jpg" alt="A person stands on a stage with a microphone." />



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image4-1024x683.jpg" alt="The group poses for a photo." width="670" height="446" />Students pose for a group photo with the lead organiser Arthur Kasirye 



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image6-1024x683.jpg" alt="The group poses for a photo." />Students arriving at the WordCamp



<p>Over the course of the two-day event, attendees had the opportunity to attend a wide range of sessions, workshops, and presentations. Many of these were led by female speakers who shared their experiences and expertise with the audience.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The topics covered ranged from beginner-level introductions to WordPress to more advanced topics such as website optimization, content creation, and web security.</p>



<p>One of the most inspiring sessions of the event was a panel discussion on women in tech. This session featured female leaders in the Ugandan tech industry who shared their experiences and insights with the audience. The panelists talked about the challenges they had faced as women in a male-dominated industry and offered advice on how to overcome those challenges.</p>



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image7-1024x684.jpg" alt="A group is sitting in chairs." />Women Panel at the Wordcamp



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image5-1024x880.jpg" alt="The group poses for a photo." />



<p>Another highlight of WordCamp Entebbe was the student program. This program provided an opportunity for students to attend the event and learn more about WordPress and the tech industry in general. The students were able to attend workshops and presentations, network with professionals in the industry, and gain valuable insights into the world of tech as well as introduced to the new study curriculum of the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) a Ugandan quality assurance directorate offering nationally, regionally and internationally recognized quality assurance services for the Business, Technical, Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) were students can use WordPress in their final year projects and graded on a national level.</p>



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image3-1024x683.jpg" alt="A group is observing a laptop." />Students learning to install WordPress website



<p>This year’s WordCamp was led by Kasirye Arthur the leader of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/entebbe-wordpress-meetup/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress Community in Entebbe</a>&nbsp;who is also a community lead for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/kampala-woocommerce-meetup-group/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Woocommerce</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/elementor-uganda-meetup-group/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elementor</a></p>



<p>Overall, WordCamp Entebbe was a hugely successful event that demonstrated the power of gender diversity in the tech industry.&nbsp;</p>



<p>By creating a program that was focused on empowering women in Tech, the organizers of this event helped to inspire a new generation of female technologists. It is our hope that more events like WordCamp Entebbe will be organized even in schools so that we can continue to build a more diverse and inclusive tech industry.&nbsp;</p>



<img src="https://masterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image8-1024x684.jpg" alt="The group poses for a photo." width="670" height="447" />WordCamp Entebbe organising Team";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:30:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Kasirye Arthur";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"WPTavern: Equalize Digital Raises Pre-Seed Funding for Expanding Accessibility Checker Plugin Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142818";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:116:"https://wptavern.com/equalize-digital-raises-pre-seed-funding-for-expanding-accessibility-checker-plugin-development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3689:"<p>Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility products and consulting company, has <a href="https://equalizedigital.com/equalize-digital-receives-investment-emilia-capital/">received an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding</a> from Emilia Capital, the investment company owned by Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt. The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of Equalize Digital&#8217;s <a href="https://equalizedigital.com/accessibility-checker/">Accessibility Checker plugin</a>, a tool for auditing websites for WCAG, ADA, and Section 508 accessibility errors.</p>



<p>Emilia Capital now owns part of the company, although its owners were not given seats on the board. Equalize Digital founder and CEO Amber Hinds said they will be serving as advisors and playing a role in strategic planning, especially around marketing and plugin development.</p>



<p>The Accessibility Checker plugin currently has approximately 2,000 active installs, according to <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/accessibility-checker/">WordPress.org stats</a>, and the commercial upgrades make up a small percentage of Equalize Digital&#8217;s current revenue.</p>



<p>&#8220;We built the initial MVP in 2020 with an SBA loan and since then the plugin has been bootstrapped by profits from the service side of our business,&#8221; Hinds said. &#8220;My partner Steve and I have been splitting our time between client work and working on the plugin.</p>



<p>&#8220;We decided to bring on an investor because our ultimate goal is for the product to make up a significant portion of our revenue. It&#8217;s challenging to rapidly grow a product that isn&#8217;t yet self-sustaining, hence seeking investors. The funds will allow us to have full-time team members building new features, and also further invest in marketing, education, and sales than was possible while we were bootstrapping.&#8221;</p>



<p>Hinds said the features her team is targeting are aimed at making the plugin a more competitive accessibility auditing tool when compared with other existing SaaS solutions. </p>



<p>&#8220;Our focus right now is making our reports easier to understand by less technical users,&#8221; Hinds said. &#8220;The next major release with be a feature that allows people to click a button and highlight elements on the front end of the website, which will make it easier to find the element flagging the issue without having to interpret a code snippet.</p>



<p>&#8220;Other features that we have on the road map include scanning and reporting on archive pages for posts and taxonomies, improved scanning of non-English sites, and the ability for accessibility testers to log issues found during manual accessibility audits.&#8221;</p>



<p>Hinds said she was encouraged by the findings in the recent <a href="https://theadminbar.com/2023-survey/">Admin Bar survey of WordPress professionals</a>, which showed that 76.9% report they are striving for best practices when it comes to website accessibility, a significant increase from the previous year. With the new investment, Equalize Digital will be able to do more marketing to increase awareness and adoption of its tools.</p>



<p>&#8220;Ultimately I would like to see accessibility being considered during website builds in the same way that SEO is, and we&#8217;re hoping that our plugin will central to that,&#8221; Hinds said. &#8220;It&#8217;s why the free version of our plugin is much more full-featured than similar plugins. Other accessibility tools are prohibitively expensive for small businesses and bloggers. We&#8217;re aiming to build a tool that makes accessibility testing available to everyone.&#8221;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Mar 2023 03:33:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"WPTavern: Local 6.7.0 Adds Long-Requested Site Grouping Feature";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142784";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"https://wptavern.com/local-6-7-0-adds-long-requested-site-grouping-feature";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2533:"<p>WP Engine&#8217;s <a href="https://localwp.com/">Local</a> development app has released <a href="https://localwp.com/releases/6.7.0/">version 6.7.0</a> with Site Grouping, a highly requested feature that will greatly improve users&#8217; workflows. It allows users to create custom groups in the sidebar of the Local dashboard page for better organization of their sites.</p>



<p>Local users have been <a href="https://community.localwp.com/t/group-sites-in-folder-in-sidebar/454/25">asking for this feature</a> since 2017, as many are managing dozens of WordPress sites. In June 2022, the Local development team began designing and then building the feature a couple months later, incorporating feedback from user interviews and usability testing.</p>



<p> In the new Site Grouping feature, sites can be easily dragged between groups and groups can be reordered up or down, as illustrated in the release notes.</p>



<img /><a href="https://localwp.com/releases/6.7.0/">Local 6.7.0 release notes</a>



<p>Another handy feature released with Site Grouping is the ability to start, stop, restart, or delete all the sites in a group from the context menu (the three dots to the right of the group name). Sites can also be sorted by how recently they were used via the clock icon at the top of the groups sidebar. </p>



<p>To get users started, all their Starred sites have been placed in a new Starred group at the top of the sidebar. Full <a href="https://localwp.com/help-docs/local-features/site-grouping-feature/">documentation for using the new Site Grouping feature</a> is available in Local&#8217;s help resources.</p>



<p><a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/">WP Migrate</a>, formerly known as WP Migrate DB and recently <a href="https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-acquires-5-plugins-from-delicious-brains">acquired by WP Engine</a>, introduced <a href="https://wptavern.com/wp-migrate-2-6-introduces-full-site-exports-and-import-to-local">full-site exports and imports to Local</a> in January 2023. Local version 6.7.0 improves imports from WP Migrate so that they auto-select the PHP, web server, and database version closest to the production environment if Local offers the same major/minor version.</p>



<p>This release also includes several bug fixes with Local importing or pulling to an existing site, where the site&#8217;s existing settings or environment were not applied. If you experienced this bug, make sure to update to the latest 6.7.0 release before attempting more imports.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 16 Mar 2023 17:27:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"Post Status: WordPress 6.2 RC2 • Plugin Review Team Retirement News • WP20 Giveaway";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148272";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-6-2-rc2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22040:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-march-13-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (March 13, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Discover WordPress 6.2&#8217;s new features, accessibility enhancements, and developer updates. Contribute to the community by joining the Contributor Working Group. Explore new block theme template. Engage in discussions on mentorship programs. Celebrate WP20 and participate in the Wapuu Coloring Giveaway. </p></div>


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



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fas_hand-holding-heart kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WP 6.2 RC2 • Plugin Review Team Announces Mika&#8217;s Retirement • WP20 Giveaway</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9ea.png" alt="🧪" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-2/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4fa.png" alt="📺" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/your-wordpress-6-2-preview/">Your WordPress 6.2 Preview</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64b-1f3fe.png" alt="🙋🏾" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f5fa.png" alt="🗺" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/09/wordpress-6-2-field-guide/">WordPress 6.2 Field Guide</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f44b-1f3fb.png" alt="👋🏻" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/10/advance-notice-of-retirement/">Advance Notice of Mika&#8217;s Plugin Review Retirement</a></p></div></div></div>



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-2/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/episode-51-is-routine-a-rut/">WP Briefing: Episode 51: Is Routine a Rut?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/your-wordpress-6-2-preview/">Your WordPress 6.2 Preview</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/wapuu-coloring-giveaway-style-your-own-party-wapuu/">Wapuu Coloring Giveaway: Style Your Own Party Wapuu</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/celebrate-with-wordpress/">WP20 Celebrations – Join in the Party – Online &amp; In-Person</a></li>
</ul>



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



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-11 wp-block-columns">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-accessibility"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2023/03/13/accessibility-team-meeting-agenda-march-17-2023/">Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: March 17, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/13/combining-roles-to-create-a-new-contributor-ladder/">Combining Roles to Create a New Contributor Ladder</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/13/proposal-updates-to-the-mentor-program/">Proposal: Updates to the Mentor Program</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/10/launching-the-contributor-working-group-call-for-volunteers/">Launching the Contributor Working Group: Call for Volunteers</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/08/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-amer-emea-on-march-8-2023/">Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) AMER/EMEA on March 8, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/03/08/announcing-new-handbook-pages-on/">Running Funds Outside of WPCS</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/13/a-week-in-core-march-13-2023/">A Week in Core – March 13, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-3-13-march/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.3? (13 March)</a> </li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-wordpress-6-2">WordPress 6.2</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/fyi-navigation-section-of-new-site-editor-experienced-removed-for-6-2-rc-2/">FYI: Navigation section of new Site Editor experienced removed for 6.2 RC 2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/wordpress-6-2-release-candidate-1/">WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 1</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/14/wordpress-6-2-translation-status-march-14-2023/">WordPress 6.2 Translation Status (March 14, 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/04/wordpress-6-2-ready-to-be-translated/">WordPress 6.2 ready to be translated</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/09/wordpress-6-2-field-guide/">WordPress 6.2 Field Guide</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/08/requests-library-upgraded-to-2-0-5-in-wordpress-6-2/">Requests library upgraded to 2.0.5 in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/patterns-api-expanded-to-include-template_types-property/">Patterns API expanded to include template_types property</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introduction-of-block-inspector-tabs/">Introduction of Block Inspector Tabs</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/shadows-in-global-styles-with-wordpress-6-2/">Shadows in Global Styles with WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introducing-the-html-api-in-wordpress-6-2/">Introducing the HTML API in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-2/">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/introducing-move_dir-in-wordpress-6-2/">Introducing move_dir() in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/sticky-position-block-support/">Sticky position block support</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/07/upgrading-to-react-18-and-common-pitfalls-of-concurrent-mode/">Upgrading to React 18 and common pitfalls of concurrent mode</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/add-new-prop-to-serversiderender-component/">Add new prop to ServerSideRender component</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/google-fonts-are-included-locally-in-bundled-themes/">Google Fonts are included locally in bundled themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/custom-css-for-global-styles-and-per-block/">Custom CSS for global styles and per block</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/06/minimum-height-dimensions-block-support/">Minimum height dimensions block support</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/03/editor-components-updates-in-wordpress-6-2/">Editor Components updates in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/03/i18n-improvements-in-6-2/">I18N Improvements in 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/28/custom-settings-wordpress-6-2/">Customize settings for any block in WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/19/style-book-preview-of-blocks-in-global-styles/">Style Book preview of blocks in global styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/update-to-content-only-editing-filter-namespace/">Update to content only editing filter namespace</a></li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/02/wordpress-6-2-accessibility-improvements/">WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/28/wordpress-6-2-beta-4-postponed/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 Postponed</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">6.2 Live Product Demo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">Phase 2, Finale</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/03/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-2/">Hallway Hangout: Performance Improvements for WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/06/roadmap-to-6-2/">Roadmap to 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/18/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-2/">Bug Scrub Schedule for 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/early-bug-scrub-schedule-for-wp-6-2/">Early bug scrub schedule for WP&nbsp;6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/17/wordpress-6-2-planning-roundup/">WordPress 6.2 Planning Roundup</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/dev-chat-agenda-wednesday-march-15-2023/">Dev Chat Agenda, Wednesday March 15, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/editor-chat-agenda-march-15-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: March 15, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-blog">Developer Blog</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/03/block-theme-templates-the-easy-way-to-build-an-elegant-grid-of-posts/">Block theme templates: the easy way to build an elegant grid of posts</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/03/whats-new-for-developers-march-2023/">What’s new for developers? (March 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/03/block-deprecation-a-tutorial/">Block deprecation – a tutorial</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/03/13/design-share-feb-13-mar-10/">Design Share: Feb 13–Mar 10</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-do-action"><a href="https://doaction.org/">do_action</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://doaction.org/event/ruralhackers/">Rural Hackers Do_Action 2023 in Anceu Spain</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/03/16/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-meeting-march-21-2023/">Agenda for Docs Team bi-weekly meeting March 21, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/03/16/summary-for-docs-team-meeting-march-7-2023/">Summary for Docs Team meeting, March 7, 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/03/14/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-03-15/">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-03-15</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/03/14/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-5-march-2023/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, 5 March 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/03/13/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-28-february-2023/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, 28 February 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/03/15/community-meeting-recap-14-march-2023/">Community Meeting Recap (14 March 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/03/14/last-week-openverse-2023-03-06-2023-03-13/">A week in Openverse: 2023-03-06 – 2023-03-13</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/14/performance-chat-summary-14-march-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 14 March 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



<h2 id="h-polyglots"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots">Polyglots</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/15/polyglots-monthly-newsletter-march-2023/">Polyglots Monthly Newsletter: March 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/14/wordpress-6-2-translation-status-march-14-2023/">WordPress 6.2 Translation Status (March 14, 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/03/14/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-march-15-2023-1300-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – March 15, 2023 (13:00 UTC)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-plugins-1"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



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



<h2 id="h-project">Project</h2>



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



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/agenda-for-march-16th-support-meeting-2/">Agenda for March 16th Support Meeting</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/summary-for-march-9th-support-meeting/">Summary for March 9th Support Meeting</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/support-ticket-triage-session-march-22th-2023-at-1600-utc/">Support ticket triage session – March 22th 2023 at 16:00 UTC</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/14/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-all-things-layout/">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about All Things Layout</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/14/test-chat-summary-14-march-2023/">Test Chat Summary: 14 March 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-theme">Theme</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/03/15/themes-team-meeting-notes-march-14-2023/">Themes Team Meeting Notes –&nbsp;March 14, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/03/03/hallway-hangout-community-themes-initiative/">Hallway Hangout: Community Themes Initiative</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/13/meeting-agenda-for-march-14-2023/">Meeting Agenda for March 14, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/10/dev-squad-update-triage-sessions-planning/">Dev-squad update: Triage sessions planning</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/10/training-team-meeting-recap-for-march-7-2023/">Training Team Meeting Recap for March 7, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/08/introduction-to-wordpress-development-a-proposed-learning-path/">Introduction to WordPress&nbsp;Development: A proposed learning path</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-developing-user-roles-and-capabilities">Let’s code: developing user roles and capabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-developing-wordpress-user-roles-and-capabilities-2">WP dev livestream: Developing WordPress user roles and capabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=updating-a-blogs-design-informal-live-stream-part-3">Updating a blog’s design (Informal live stream) – Part 3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=%E3%82%AF%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B7%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%8B%E3%82%89%E3%83%96%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%A8%E3%83%87%E3%82%A3%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%81%AB">クラシックエディターからブロックエディターに移行するノウハウ</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-lesson-plans">Lesson Plans</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/pagine-vs-articoli/">Pagine vs. articoli</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/cosa-fare-quando-non-ti-ricordi-la-password/">Cosa fare quando non ti ricordi la password</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/ta-dashboard-overview/">டாஷ்போர்டு மேலோட்டம்</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



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



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



<h2 id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-14-2">PHP 8.2.3 Released!</a></li>



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



<li><a href="https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.4">Composer 2.5.4</a></li>
</ul>



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<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 16 Mar 2023 17:01:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"Post Status: Post Status Live – The Right Approach to WordPress Accessibility";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148252";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://poststatus.com/post-status-live-the-right-approach-to-wordpress-accessibility/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105788:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">If you’re a leader, a developer, or a designer about to start a major website project, this webinar will help you navigate the important topic of accessibility. <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> is joined by the team at <a href="https://tri.be/">Modern Tribe</a> &#8211; <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisMKindred">Chris Kindred</a>, Director of Backend Development, <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahgless">Sarah Gless</a>, Creative Director, and <a href="https://twitter.com/mjklanac">Mike Klanac</a>, Director of Business Development, to discuss why accessibility is imperative and how to integrate it into each aspect of development and implementation. </p></div>


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



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">60</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







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



<p class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio">The talented team from <a href="https://tri.be/">Modern Tribe</a>  joined <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> for this critical discussion about accessibility in WordPress. They highlight accessibility as a non-negotiable aspect of web development and provide guidance for leaders, developers, and designers to ensure your websites are accessible to all people.</p>



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



<ul type="video" class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio">
<li><strong>Why Value Accessibility? </strong>Accessibility ensures all people have access to the things we create. It can’t be an afterthought or something for the web dev team to figure out. It must drive the entire creative process and serve as an anchor to ground our teams and our work.</li>



<li><strong>Requirement vs. Challenge.</strong> Most creative projects work within a set of requirements. These don’t prohibit the creative process. Instead, they challenge us to enhance the things we build and make them better than we might have without thinking through and within these constraints.</li>



<li><strong>It’s All Around Us.</strong> We think of accessibility as a new idea, but in so many spaces, it’s the norm. We have curb cutouts and braille signage. We see this every day, so tech is catching up.</li>



<li>Improving Usability. Developing through the lens of accessibility means delivering experiences that solve people’s problems and help them with tasks.</li>



<li><strong>It Takes Tools.</strong> The creative and engineering are just rails. Utilizing tools to ensure accessibility when publishing and setting up processes and guidelines will equip you to flex as requirements change. It’s necessary for your organization to resource accessibility for it to be done effectively.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://tri.be/">Modern Tribe</a></li>



<li><a href="https://vimeo.com/148927676">Eric Meyer</a></li>



<li><a href="https://myspace.com/">MySpace</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/brandondove"></a><a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisMKindred">Chris Kindred</a> (Director of Backend Development, <a href="https://twitter.com/pixel_jar"></a><a href="https://twitter.com/ModernTribeAgcy">Modern Tribe</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/sarahgless">Sarah Gless</a> (Creative Director, <a href="https://twitter.com/pixel_jar"></a><a href="https://twitter.com/ModernTribeAgcy">Modern Tribe</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/mjklanac">Mike Klanac</a> (Director of Business Development, <a href="https://twitter.com/pixel_jar"></a><a href="https://twitter.com/ModernTribeAgcy">Modern Tribe</a>)</li>



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



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



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



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



<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Everybody welcome back to another Post Status Live. This is where we<br />do, uh, webinars and interviews with our awesome members at Post Status. And today we&#8217;ve<br />got a great talented team from Modern Tribe.<br />I&#8217;m gonna let them unpack a little bit more about what Modern Tribe does and what they do at<br />Modern Tribe. But today, our topic is gonna be the right approach to WordPress accessibility.<br />This kinda, this really came to the forefront for us and why I sought these experts out because<br />accessibility is a non-negotiable for the web.<br />Um, and they&#8217;re gonna talk more about their passion, their experiences, their expertise around<br />that. But I will just say this is a topic that we need to be talking about more, and we&#8217;re<br />specifically doing this webinar, and I&#8217;ve asked them to come on and share. Particular areas and<br />work inaccessibility with WordPress.<br />But if you&#8217;re a leader, you&#8217;re a developer, you&#8217;re a designer, um, starting to embark on a, on a<br />website project and want rightly so, to [00:01:00] make sure your website is accessible to all<br />people. This is, this is the extended webinar for you. We&#8217;re gonna talk, we&#8217;re gonna talk about a<br />lot. We&#8217;re gonna talk about how does a c-suite or leadership team properly resource and lead,<br />uh, in the accessibility projects for your organization, all the way down to the developers,<br />designers, the people that use the website every single day to make sure you&#8217;re doing your best<br />for those, trying to access your website.<br />So, I wanna introduce these te these, uh, this team today, but I&#8217;m gonna let you do that. So,<br />Mike, could you start us off and share, um, a little bit about what you do with, with, uh, uh, your<br />work at Modern Tribe and, uh, your interest in this whole topic of accessibility?<br />Mike Klanac: Yeah, thanks Corey. Um, my name is Mike Klan.<br />I am the Director of Business Development at Modern Tribe. Um, that&#8217;s essentially a sales role<br />here. [00:02:00] Um, and, uh, I&#8217;m really excited to talk more about accessibility. Um, I, you know,<br />to be transparent, I was actually a little nervous at first, uh, because of my role as essentially a<br />sales role. And, um, this is such an important topic and, and Corey in like preparing for this, you<br />said something that, that resonated with me, which is, , you know, if this is important, um, don&#8217;t<br />feel bad about being an advocate for it and talking about it.<br />Um, so, uh, that helped build my confidence. So I&#8217;m excited to be here to talk more especially<br />about, uh, accessibility as it relates to leadership and as it relates to a core value that stretches<br />across all components of your business. Uh, so, um, yeah, I think continue on with introductions<br />and maybe I could circle back and, and tell you a little bit more about, uh, tribe and how long<br />we&#8217;ve been around.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. We&#8217;ll, we&#8217;ll come back to you, but I think you, you know, one compelling<br />reason you&#8217;re here too is because you do talk to people that are making decisions, [00:03:00]<br />but not necessarily always the people doing the work too. And it&#8217;s a collaborative approach. And<br />I know your heart, you&#8217;re super, super humble, but very experienced.<br />Mm-hmm. , um, professional. So I&#8217;m really glad to have you on here and you&#8217;re gonna talk first<br />as we, after we do introductions about the whole leadership angle for all of this. Um, Chris and<br />Sarah. Yeah,<br />Chris Kindred: thanks. Um, my name&#8217;s Chris Kendrick. I am, uh, director of backend, um,<br />engineering here at Modern Tribe. Um, I, accessibility&#8217;s always been a passion of mine, um, and<br />it&#8217;s been, uh, really great to come on board at somewhere like Modern Tribe, where they take<br />flexibility so seriously.<br />So, uh, that&#8217;s always been a, a great thing for, for me, um, moving forward. So,<br />yeah.<br />Sarah Gless: Hi, I&#8217;m Sarah Glass. Oh, sorry.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead Sarah. Yeah, thanks Chris.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, thank you for having us. Um, I&#8217;m Sarah Glass. I&#8217;m the creative Director at<br />Modern [00:04:00] Tribe. Ultimately, that means I&#8217;m in service to both our clients, making sure<br />that we&#8217;re shipping incredibly beautiful and, and and engaging work, um, as well as our design</p>



<p>team, ensuring that, you know, they&#8217;re fulfilled in and the work that they&#8217;re doing, and we&#8217;re<br />continuously developing and pushing the work forward.<br />Um, I&#8217;m super passionate about accessibility too. You know, I think that, as you know, coming<br />from a design background, um, ultimately I wanna communicate effectively with, with, with<br />people. And, um, if, if you cut off people in those lanes of communication, um, how good is that<br />design? So I, I truly believe that good design is accessible design.<br />Um, super excited to, to be here and, and chat more about.<br />Cory Miller: I can&#8217;t wait to dig in with all three of you because what you just said, Sarah, is good<br />access, good accessibility is good design. And I think there&#8217;s probably a lot of designers out<br />there that just kind of like, oh, okay, we can do this. So I&#8217;m looking forward to talking more about<br />that, particularly, um, I&#8217;m gonna hype &#8217;em up,<br />[00:05:00] Yeah, absolutely. This can be, you know, that&#8217;s another message in all this, this can<br />be done. There is an approach, a good approach to it, and it is possible, and I think that&#8217;s a<br />really great message. Um, so Mike, before we kind of get into the actual topics, could you tell us<br />a little bit more about Modern Tribe as an agency?<br />Mike Klanac: Sure, sure. I&#8217;ll give you the short version. So, um, Modern Tribe, we like to call<br />ourselves a full service digital design and development agency. Um, we&#8217;ve been around for<br />about 15 years now, uh, and recently joined the liquid web family of brands. Um, I think like one<br />of the way, another way we describe ourselves is we say we connect to the touchpoints of your<br />digital ecosystem.<br />Um, and when I say that, I think what&#8217;s important to note is kind of that WordPress is often. the<br />center, it&#8217;s the hub, the WordPress TMS is the hub of that ecosystem. So we lean on, on<br />WordPress heavily. [00:06:00] Um, and our, our business, I mean, it sort of breaks down into<br />four key categories. There&#8217;s strategy, there&#8217;s content, there&#8217;s design, there&#8217;s engineering, um,<br />and that&#8217;s sort of who we are.<br />Um, accessibility of the topic at hand today, uh, as you&#8217;ll see it, it sort of permeates all of those<br />areas and it&#8217;s sort of core to who we are, um, as an organization. So, um, yeah, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re<br />press agency.<br />Cory Miller: And I know you all work with some name brand organizations. Maybe you can&#8217;t all<br />talk about it, but I&#8217;m aware enough to know that you all have worked with some of the biggest<br />brands that are household names, helping them specifically, not just with their web, but also that<br />this important part, accessibility.<br />And some of these, uh, organizations, Mike, particularly I know from talking with you all<br />background about this, is if you take federal funding in any way, particularly in the United States,<br />it, it&#8217;s not even a conversation about is it, is [00:07:00] it a thing we should do? It&#8217;s like, no, you<br />do it. And I think that amps us up even more.<br />Um, thankfully, government non-profits have led the way with accessibility, but this is something<br />we&#8217;ll talk more about. Everybody should be doing this. Um, this is this, we&#8217;re in 2023 now today.<br />And it, this is just a part and I&#8217;m, that&#8217;s why, another reason I&#8217;m glad, but you all work with these<br />organizations where you&#8217;re like, there&#8217;s a lot of scrutiny on these organizations you work with.<br />That means that that&#8217;s a good thing in a way because they have to make sure, like Sarah was<br />saying, that this website is successful for anyone that wants to, to access it. So, uh, I think that&#8217;s<br />pretty critical and also demonstrates why I asked Modern Tribe and U three to come on to talk<br />about this today.<br />So, okay, here&#8217;s the layout. We&#8217;re gonna talk about leadership. Now for those of you watching<br />and listening, um, we&#8217;re gonna each, each of the experts, I&#8217;ve asked to talk about a specific area<br />related to their expertise, but you&#8217;re gonna hear from them. I&#8217;ve told them, I said, [00:08:00] I<br />don&#8217;t want you to stay silent.<br />Mike&#8217;s part part, I want you to contribute too, because. As we&#8217;ve talked and prepared for this, it&#8217;s<br />helped me understand this is a holistic process that everybody in the organization needs to<br />embrace. And so, again, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll just say to y&#8217;all, please, if Mike&#8217;s talking, share something from<br />your perspective about this, uh, please do that.<br />Cause I think this is gonna help people. Our intention here is you&#8217;re trying to do right and good<br />by this for your website project. So I want you all to like, help them really understand these are<br />the things we work with clients about. These are the problems we see, these are the challenges<br />we see and here&#8217;s our thoughts.</p>



<p>Because you, you are experts in this and you see things that I think could make those trying to<br />cross this threshold, um, truly be prepared for and make really good decisions that helps<br />everybody involved, even if they don&#8217;t choose modern tribe as the agency. So again, I think<br />that&#8217;s right on important.<br />Okay, so let&#8217;s just start right here, because [00:09:00] oftentimes, as I understand this, both<br />leading my own organizations, listening to you all and other agency members that post status, I<br />go, um, this type of decision needs to start at the, you know, the top of the hierarchy here. If the<br />leaders aren&#8217;t on board or don&#8217;t fully understand it, this is gonna be a problem.<br />So, I hope those leaders listening, this is your time to take notes because Mike, I, I want you to<br />kind of, what do you think of when you&#8217;re saying, okay, I am, let&#8217;s say a c e O of an organization<br />or in the C-suite or leadership team. I need to start helping think through this, you know,<br />accessibility for what we do on the web.<br />What stands out to you when we talked about leadership and WordPress accessibility.<br />Mike Klanac: Yeah, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m so glad we get to talk about it from this perspective, because so<br />often accessibility can get pretty dense and technical right away. Um, but in today&#8217;s modern<br />world, uh, it it&#8217;s more than that. And it&#8217;s something that permeates all aspects of your business if<br />you [00:10:00] want it to be successful.<br />And therefore, it often has to start with leadership, um, realizing why it&#8217;s, IM important. Um, it&#8217;s,<br />it&#8217;s gotta be built as a core consideration, um, to all of those various layers. Uh, and the best<br />organizations, the really effective organizations that care and are considerate of their users<br />make this a, a core value.<br />It&#8217;s, it literally becomes, um, part of the culture. Top to bottom. Um, so I think one of the ways to<br />build that understanding is to really think about like, why you&#8217;re doing this. And we hit on the<br />legal implications initially, and I think that&#8217;s where a lot of people first start thinking about this for<br />some reason.<br />But you kind of need to back up and really remember that one of the first reasons this is<br />important is, is just morally, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s morally important. It&#8217;s a part of digital inclusivity. We are<br />creating tools that serve [00:11:00] users, that serve people, and therefore we need to care for<br />them. We need to think about how they use it.<br />And that applies to all of the users. It&#8217;s an increasingly competitive world. We don&#8217;t have the<br />luxury of, um, excluding people because it&#8217;s not convenient to, um, build tools that serve them<br />effectively. So I think like we really need to ground ourselves in the moral component of this first,<br />which is it&#8217;s the right thing to do.<br />It&#8217;s just the right thing to do, therefore needs to be a leadership initiative. It needs to be brought<br />in, carried through to all components, all layers of your business. Okay. So that&#8217;s like the first<br />thing that I would probably tell a leader in this space is that make it a part of all of your thinking.<br />Cory Miller: I mean, you know, I, we were talking about a client used to consult with before we<br />started recording and I was like, you could tell there the client one did the traditional thing, print<br />off your core values, put it on all the doors, and you&#8217;re like, cool. Yeah. But what are your real<br />core values? [00:12:00] And it seems to me, as you talk about one, there is a business reason<br />to do this, very legitimate that it&#8217;s gonna get a lot of people&#8217;s attention.<br />But I think what you were, you&#8217;re saying is like it should reflect a value that you might not have<br />on the door, but like we care. Yes, we care about the whole population and being able to get to<br />the things that we offer. And if we don&#8217;t, it it, I mean that rings really true when you say that<br />business, there&#8217;s a legitimate business reason and that should hopefully check most boxes.<br />But I think the other thing is that you should actually just care. Yeah. We&#8217;ve all probably been<br />touched in some way with someone that has, uh, uh, uh, something that doesn&#8217;t allow them to<br />see, read, hear, whatever that is, um, that we need to be thinking about that. Just because we<br />don&#8217;t have that particular issue doesn&#8217;t mean there&#8217;s a pretty significant one is a significant<br />enough to me.<br />But I mean this, we&#8217;re talking about in this accessibility [00:13:00] conversation quite a bit of the<br />population that most organizations have flatly not even thought about till today.<br />Mike Klanac: Exactly. Yeah, I think it just sends the right message. You know, when you&#8217;re the<br />type of organization that takes the time to be deliberate and considerate of all of your users,<br />there&#8217;s probably an understanding that that carries through to your product.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re selling something, um, you, your service, your, your organization as a whole. So, um,<br />it&#8217;s just the right thing to do. And I think, I think we should just start there as it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s morally right.<br />And as you hit on, um, and to segue a little bit, there are legitimate business reasons. So, um,<br />making sure that your, your site is fully accessible, has this effect of improving the quality, the<br />experience for your users.<br />And that sort of in some ways overlays these other topics that we often talk about as like key<br />performance indicators for businesses. [00:14:00] Things like search engine optimization, um,<br />core web vitals. Um, these are adjacent to each other. So it it&#8217;s about creating an experience<br />that is a user experience that&#8217;s quality for everyone, and therefore your, your business will feel<br />that it&#8217;ll have an impact.<br />Um, so not only is it the right thing to do, morally a highly accessible site that&#8217;s gonna benefit<br />your, your clicks, your conversions, and all those things that we&#8217;ve spent so much time thinking<br />about, um, and that we&#8217;re starting to, to kind of like land a couple of really important reasons. It&#8217;s<br />like, you know, it&#8217;s what&#8217;s good as a person, it&#8217;s what&#8217;s good for business.<br />Um, it th those alone are, are enough reason, right, to really think long and hard about this. Um,<br />But there&#8217;s this final one too, which is the one we kind of backed into this from, which was,<br />there&#8217;s some legal requirements here. I I, I pulled a stat, and I think everyone&#8217;s aware of this,<br />but, [00:15:00] um, 2,800 accessibility lawsuits in 2021.<br />Um, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s a big deal. And those lawsuits, um, are meaningful and there&#8217;s a place<br />for them. Um, but more important than the litigation itself is you just have an opportunity to get<br />ahead of this if you do things right, and that can get confusing. Um, I, sorry, you&#8217;re gonna jump<br />in. I&#8217;ll take a beat.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, no, I, I think, um, I&#8217;m curious to hear what Chris and Sarah think too,<br />because it&#8217;s like, you know, we&#8217;ve all been to those situations, uh, where you&#8217;re like, the<br />organization talks a really good talk. Yeah. You know, and we&#8217;ve got plenty of those in our<br />society globally today. But you know, the ones that talk.<br />And you know that ones that just act on that value. And I think this shines pretty clearly whether<br />you go to a website, you see the accessibility blue circle or whatever this is. And I think<br />[00:16:00] this is an opportunity. I&#8217;m curious what Chris and Sarah think too from just an<br />organization standpoint of like when you see someone taking it to this degree, not because they<br />necessarily have to, a lot of these have to, but, and there&#8217;s a probably legitimate reason why<br />there&#8217;s regulations and laws and different things in these lawsuits is because like, okay, if you&#8217;re<br />not gonna do the right thing, the, the world society will kind of push you in that regard.<br />But I think, I&#8217;m curious what you think Chris and Sarah is like, this is a way to get out front and<br />lead act on those values. You can&#8217;t just say you care, but if you care enough to make sure your<br />website is A to B, everybody can can access that and and consume the information and<br />whatever you&#8217;re trying to offer in the world, that&#8217;s an opportunity for leadership to me.<br />So Sarah, Chris, what do you think? . I, yeah,<br />Chris Kindred: I, uh, okay. Uh, I, I think there&#8217;s a huge opportunity there. One of the things we<br />tend to hear is, well, that&#8217;s not the kind of person we&#8217;re marketing to. And [00:17:00] you know,<br />there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s so much more than that going on with accessibility. It&#8217;s, you know, you may not<br />be marketing to &#8217;em right now, but who knows what&#8217;s going to happen in the future.<br />They, they, uh, or, or, um, friends that they have that, that kind of thing, they can help, um, push<br />along whatever product you&#8217;re pushing. And in those cases, so, you know, you&#8217;ve got, um,<br />you&#8217;ve got companies that come at it from that angle and, and there&#8217;s a little bit of education that<br />we have to do to help kind of get &#8217;em over that hump of this.<br />This is, this is a moral thing as well, . It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not who you&#8217;re marketing to. It is that you are<br />marketing to everybody. Everyone&#8217;s going to see it, and it&#8217;s important that everybody be able to<br />see it.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, and I think that, like, going back to Mike&#8217;s original point, like it takes the<br />organization to do that.<br />It cannot be on the shoulders of like your web team. Um, yes, they are like [00:18:00] hands-on<br />producing and shipping that thing. Um, but that thing should be symbolic of like a much larger,<br />um, um, effort around accessibility. Um, and, and your kind of example around, you know,<br />posting your, your core values as a, as a company on the wall, um, and accessibility or<br />inclusivity being on that, um, kind of made me start to think like, what&#8217;s like a real example of, of<br />this.</p>



<p>Um, you know, like I, I. And transferring that responsibility, not transferring, but sharing that<br />responsibility across the organization means you have to figure out, like, how can each<br />department take part in that? Um, how can we better collaborate on that mission? Um, I think,<br />you know, I&#8217;ve spent a lot of times on and, and working with like brand and marketing teams,<br />great opportunity for, for, for people to get involved in accessibility that may not be, um, on the<br />line to like ship that, that website necessarily.<br />Um, for example, we mentioned, you know, calling out your brand [00:19:00] values. Maybe<br />you&#8217;ve got, you know, being inclusive as, as, as a brand value. Well back that up with like, you<br />know, shipping accessible designs on the marketing side. So like, if you&#8217;re working on a brand<br />book, um, A big part of that is establishing a color palette.<br />Um, and that color palette has implications across so much of your collateral across the<br />organization, including that website. Now, oftentimes what happens on like design, um, is that<br />we&#8217;re handed a brand book with colors we can&#8217;t use, and now we&#8217;re having to rework that<br />because accessibility was never consideration going into that.<br />Um, so that&#8217;s like a, a various, you know, tech like tactile example of, of how one little shift, you<br />know, like, and if your team doesn&#8217;t have the specialties to do that, that&#8217;s okay. Like lean on a<br />team of experts to help and collaborate on that. So bring in the web team into, you know, that<br />brand conversation and when you&#8217;re developing that color palette or, or whatever the thing is,<br />um, to get their [00:20:00] expertise and, and, and make sure that we&#8217;re living up to that kind of,<br />you know, core tenant of being inclusive and accessible.<br />And also, um, Beyond just being like the right thing to do. Like, you know, if you do work ahead,<br />the more you work ahead on accessibility, the more money you&#8217;ll save down the road, um,<br />because you don&#8217;t have to rework as much. So, um, definitely another, you know, kind of<br />business, um, opportunity.<br />Cory Miller: And I, I think, thanks for that.<br />Oh, Chris, go ahead.<br />Chris Kindred: Well, that, that just made me start thinking, um, one of the things is accessibility<br />doesn&#8217;t just stop with your digital things. Um, I, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a billboard I drive past or used to<br />drive past all the time, and I could barely read it because it was blue on blue and it just didn&#8217;t,<br />didn&#8217;t work well for, for me as I was driving a car 60 miles an hour past it.<br />I, I, if you&#8217;re going. Put that your, uh, that accessibility and, [00:21:00] and being inclusive as<br />part of your core values that trickles into your billboard, that trickles into the entryway to your<br />business, that that trickles into so many other things in order to prove it.<br />Sarah Gless: It&#8217;s a mind shift, isn&#8217;t it? Like when you, when you Yeah, when and, but it, but<br />once you start doing and getting the practice of that and resource for it, that&#8217;s a critical part of<br />this, right?<br />Um, you, it will become a habit. And, and that&#8217;s a good habit to have.<br />Cory Miller: And I keep shaping this mike in my mind as it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a problem, but if we can do it,<br />you just said Sarah and shift her mind, we go, this is an opportunity to show people we care. We<br />don&#8217;t have to put the word on there. If we do certain things like this, just like we&#8217;ve mentioned,<br />diversity, equity, inclusion, huge topic and rightly.<br />This is going, if we truly want to act on that, we need to think about that person who might be<br />blind and trying to ex, like you were talking about, you know, the color palettes and things. It&#8217;s to<br />that thought. [00:22:00] But Mike, it seems like too, I think Chris and Boer helped me today.<br />Like, let&#8217;s add another reason here.<br />This is a team Mork, Hey, we care. So we&#8217;re doing this accessibility project and, and other<br />initiatives in the business side of things that they can do to say, we&#8217;re not just gonna say it, we&#8217;re<br />gonna do it. I mean, this seems like when you go to your team, like Sarah was saying, and<br />you&#8217;re like, Hey, leadership has bought in on this and understands it.<br />Now we go to the team, we want, hey, we want everyone as best we can to do, to, to be able to<br />access things.<br />Mike Klanac: It&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a foundational, um, shift in how you think about it. So a small example<br />would be we used to, um, ask, do you need your site to be accessible? And now we just<br />assume we&#8217;re gonna build accessible sites.<br />And we used to take a pass at estimating a project and then sort of like do some additional math<br />to calculate accessibility. Now we assume accessibility is a part of every estimate that [00:23:00]</p>



<p>you&#8217;re doing. Every line item of the feature level estimate incorporates accessibility thinking.<br />Um, and that&#8217;s, and that&#8217;s, that changes the approach.<br />It, it&#8217;s, it starts at the beginning. It carries through all the way to the end. And I, I think I would be<br />remiss not to mention one other topic on leadership that this conversation is sort of remind me<br />of, which is that these standards we&#8217;re talking accessibility is sort of this like, like just just this<br />open-ended term, but it, it means probably slightly different things.<br />And from a leadership standpoint, I think one other thing you need to really consider is what<br />standard are you, in some cases mandated to hit? And just understanding that is part of the<br />leadership obligation because you are the person that may often understand where you&#8217;re doing<br />business, what your jurisdictions are, um, what, what laws you&#8217;re bound to.<br />And if you&#8217;re as an international organization, we, we work with groups in Europe, we work with<br />groups [00:24:00] in California. We, we work with groups that have different sets of<br />requirements and different guidelines. So I think an important note for anyone who&#8217;s, who&#8217;s<br />gonna try to build this philosophy into their organization as they should, uh, is to, to like really<br />fundamentally set some clear guidelines to your team and say that based on where we do<br />business and where we&#8217;re approaching it, the way we&#8217;re approaching it, we&#8217;re gonna try to hit,<br />you know, stay tuned to section 5 0 8.<br />Um, And, and the, the outlines set in WIC AG two one, aa. Like we, there needs to be some<br />basis for what you&#8217;re aiming towards. Uh, it doesn&#8217;t, doesn&#8217;t mean that, um, you can&#8217;t go past<br />that. Um, but uh, you probably need to have that guiding light.<br />Cory Miller: Uh, and I think there&#8217;s a relief for me talking to you all on this too, because when I<br />know for instance, this is a value, right?<br />That we want to, that I love you, you said, uh, just it&#8217;s assumed. You know, [00:25:00] we&#8217;re in<br />2023 having this conversation. It doesn&#8217;t matter what&#8217;s been in the past today, this is just an<br />assumption that mind shift shift, um, but that it occurs to me, you know, as a leader and then<br />we&#8217;ve all kind of talked this and know this, we can&#8217;t know every single thing.<br />Like you&#8217;re talking about these specific legislation, policies, regulations out there. You can&#8217;t<br />possibly. So, but I wanna say there&#8217;s hope. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re having this conversation. That&#8217;s<br />why there&#8217;s great experts in WordPress overall. Try being one of them that, um, can help<br />navigate some of those. Like it doesn&#8217;t need to be the, the thing that you keep up with at the<br />absolute.<br />That&#8217;s why you hire people like you all to even mention some of these things. Like I&#8217;ve been in<br />tech a long time and I learned something when I&#8217;m talking about when to you all about these<br />things that I hadn&#8217;t considered. And I think that&#8217;s a maybe a sense. Is like, there&#8217;s a little bit of<br />relief you can say like you want to do the right thing.<br />That&#8217;s why you go seek out experts that do. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve enjoyed preparation about this. I&#8217;ve<br />learned [00:26:00] a ton that I wouldn&#8217;t even considered . Like Sarah, you were talking about the<br />brand and I go more design Chris than tech sometimes, cuz I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m talking about<br />with tech all the time. But I go take this thought and go to your brand values.<br />We have oranges ours, but I have no idea how that expresses itself necessarily. Right. Uh, on<br />the web for someone that&#8217;s hurt and that&#8217;s a holistic thinking. We&#8217;re thinking like we, we&#8217;ve hit<br />this do do good and it&#8217;s got a pretty dang good benefit because it&#8217;s like absolutely. You can<br />actually reflect and show what you&#8217;re doing.<br />So.<br />Sarah Gless: Absolutely. Um, yeah. And you mentioned like. Kind of like leaning on on experts.<br />And that ki kind of got me thinking, like, I think there&#8217;s this expectation. Um, I know design<br />designers put this expectation on them to, to, um, sometimes to, to be able to like have<br />expertise in this. And like we absolutely have to have, you know, baseline knowledge and, and<br />skills that apply to [00:27:00] our work to meet accessibility.<br />But, um, you know, as an organization, if you&#8217;re in a marketing team, um, for example, and<br />you&#8217;re like, do I, do I need to know everything about accessibility? No. And there&#8217;s no, I mean,<br />accessibility is a, you know, a full team of effort. Um, yeah. Um, at Modern Tribe, we&#8217;ve got a full<br />dedicated QA team that is testing rigorously everything we design and build.<br />Um, so, so no. But can you get to a place where you&#8217;ve got like a good baseline knowledge of<br />accessibility and or also like resources that you know you can turn to, whether it be, um, your<br />own team internally that&#8217;s focused on accessibility, your leadership has resource for awesome.</p>



<p>Or, um, if you can work with consultants or agencies like us or, or what whoever, um, get that,<br />that resource embedded in your team so you can turn to them, um, for their expertise.<br />Because [00:28:00] accessibility is like this ever-changing thing that will continue to grow. Um,<br />and, and I just wanna, like, I think that&#8217;s something like in my own past, I put that pressure on<br />myself and, um mm-hmm. , it&#8217;s a lot of pressure and it can, can kind of, um, um, get you away<br />from other, you know, priorities within your role.<br />So acknowledge that you do not have to, um, necessarily be experts, inaccessibility, but you do<br />have like a moral and business responsibility. To care about it and get help when you need it.<br />Um, um, so yeah,<br />Cory Miller: I think, I think that&#8217;s, that, that&#8217;s a great point. Um, in, in all this. Um, and now we&#8217;re<br />gonna shift to you in just a moment to talk specifically about design, Sarah.<br />But Mike, before we do that, I just wanna make sure, I think we&#8217;ve hit really big pillars here. Um,<br />moral business requirements, , it can be, there&#8217;s an opportunity here to lead and show that you<br />truly care. Um, anything else you think about when you&#8217;re, when you&#8217;re thinking about leaders<br />[00:29:00] making these decisions, wanting to give those resources to design and team and<br />things like that, anything else that we missed that you wanna share?<br />Mike Klanac: Just to like summarize, it&#8217;s a tremendous opportunity. It went from being, uh, a<br />challenge, a problem to No, this is just an opportunity to better serve our, our audience. Um, and<br />that&#8217;s how I would be thinking about it.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, what a great mind shift and what a great takeaway we have more. So if<br />you&#8217;re a leader in an, an organization making these decisions, stay on because there&#8217;s more,<br />because this is a, we&#8217;re we&#8217;re evolving and growing this concept, like we&#8217;ve been saying as a<br />mind shift, shift change over.<br />What a great, great way to sum up that, Mike. Thank you. Okay, so Sarah, now let&#8217;s just talk<br />creative and design, because a part of this, I&#8217;ll just say this, I was like, okay, I can get the<br />decision. Like I can really embody that and go, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;ll take time, it will take effort, it will take<br />money. But as we&#8217;re talking, I go, [00:30:00] gosh, I&#8217;ve been in the seat too, where you&#8217;re a<br />marketing person or you&#8217;re trying to ship the work into, through the website and there&#8217;s<br />decisions and things that you need to be thinking about that.<br />So as we talk about in this role, creative and design, what, what things stick out to you as we<br />approach the accessibility topic?<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, absolutely. Well, um, I think just acknowledging that it is a requirement. Um,<br />I think that there&#8217;s this kind of stigma that accessible design, um, pro, you know, prohibits<br />creativity, um, in a way that, you know, accessibly designed websites.<br />Are ugly , for lack of a better term. Um, and I think that that stems from, you know, a history of,<br />of hearing about lawsuits and, and, and building requirements around certain sectors. Um,<br />particularly like the government. Um, and websites for governments or government, um,<br />institutions are, are, are typically not known for, [00:31:00] um, their design.<br />There are a few, of course . Um, so it&#8217;s, it, you know, accessibility, I think in the design world has<br />a, a, a reputation that it&#8217;s gonna restrict me. Um, and I don&#8217;t like to think about that like that. I, I, I<br />want, you know, our design team, we, we sh we, we have a mindset that it&#8217;s just an a<br />requirement and any creative brief you get, um, I&#8217;m sorry, but it&#8217;s gonna have requirements on it.<br />Um, and so if you think about that and shift your mind into thinking that way, it truly does<br />become a creative opportunity, um, and a creative challenge. And, um, I think designers and<br />creatives. Tend to work very well if you give them some structure, but then opportunities to<br />innovate and there&#8217;s tons of opportunities to do that with accessibility.<br />Um, I think of like a past project we worked on for, um, oh, very well known, uh, Ivy League, uh,<br />school, um, that, you know, we designed a, a navigation, it was very robust, it [00:32:00] was<br />very, um, uh, boundary pushing, I&#8217;ll say on the design side. And at first blush, it did not look like<br />it was going to meet accessibility.<br />Um, we worked and collaborated with our QA team, our engineering team, um, and within those<br />boundaries of accessibility and or those requirements, um, and looking at this thing that we<br />really wanted to like put live into the world, we figured it out. Um, and we shipped a very<br />accessible, um, site and navigation that ended up winning a design award like.<br />You can do it. It&#8217;s totally possible. Does it take more resources and time? Yes, but it&#8217;s like po you<br />know? Yes. Um, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s no way around that, but yes. Um, but you, it, it&#8217;s, it, it truly can</p>



<p>actually lead to like innovative ideas because, um, even within those requirements, there&#8217;s,<br />there&#8217;s bars to push and like, uh, [00:33:00] uh, figure out how to, to, um, uh, make this work.<br />Cory Miller: So, yeah, I think what you&#8217;re saying, so I fancy myself sometimes justified or not as<br />a creative, and what I hear when you say that is, I know there&#8217;s a bunch of people, when you<br />said the first part feels like it could prohibit, they&#8217;re probably like, yeah, it feels that way. But then<br />you spun it around and you said, this is an opportunity here.<br />I I, when I fancy myself as a creative, I go, constraints are actually really good in a lot of cases.<br />And so if, if it&#8217;s a challenge, Hey, you&#8217;ve give, you&#8217;re given these tools. Take it and be creative.<br />Like that&#8217;s what I got from that example you just gave is like, we looked at it potentially as an<br />obstacle, but we turned it into an opportunity to be really creative and make it work.<br />And I think that&#8217;s part of like, I&#8217;ll get a little fur here and say artistic, like when you say you&#8217;re<br />creative, it means like, don&#8217;t look at these as problems. [00:34:00] Look at &#8217;em as opportunities.<br />You know, that&#8217;s the thing we got with leadership. It seems like. That&#8217;s what I just, I wrote it<br />down. I was like, we&#8217;re talking about how this challenge can be viewed as an opportunity and for<br />creatives, having worked with some creatives, I&#8217;m like, Hey, see what you can do.<br />Yeah. The best things. See what you, yeah.<br />See what you can get away with. , ,<br />Sarah Gless: no, little rebellious ,<br />Mike Klanac: as a definite not creative. I, I really think this is an interesting part of the<br />conversation and somewhere out there, well, this is the part that I can add, I can add that there&#8217;s<br />an article about like Jack White and the White Stripes.<br />There&#8217;s this like idea of threes where they stay within three colors, three instruments, and that<br />that parameter within that, they try to push innovation as much as possible, and clearly they&#8217;ve<br />been successful with it, so.<br />Sarah Gless: Absolutely. That&#8217;s awesome. I, and you know, like, oh, go ahead Chris.<br />Chris Kindred: I, I feel like there&#8217;s another aspect specifically to the, the, um, menu that you&#8217;re,<br />that you&#8217;re talking about there [00:35:00] as a technical team.<br />When we look at a menu that came in like that, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re looking at it going, now there&#8217;s the,<br />this is gonna be difficult, .<br />And the, the amazing part is though, . It just takes some communication. It takes the team<br />working together to figure out, okay, here&#8217;s where we can push a boundary. We, we, great point.<br />We know how to handle this piece. And we get that developed. We, we work with, you know,<br />our, our, our front end team does an amazing job at staying up to date with things like WIC ag<br />and, and we can really lean on them in, in some of these cases to say, okay, here&#8217;s how you can<br />accomplish this in an accessible way.<br />And then with com, with good communication between design and, and our, our engineering<br />team, we can, we can keep pushing those boundaries. Uh, you, you mentioned that it costs<br />more, it does cost more to be innovative [00:36:00] like that. That&#8217;s just part of being on the front<br />end of the curve. Right? If, if you are trying to push boundaries, it&#8217;s going to cost more.<br />but accessibility doesn&#8217;t have to cost more either. The innovation piece of it is what&#8217;s costing<br />more. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, if, if you&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re wanting to, to do a big award-winning nav,<br />heck yeah, let&#8217;s do it. Let&#8217;s jump in, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s do it together. Uh, but it doesn&#8217;t have to be that<br />way to be accessible either, right?<br />Mm-hmm. . So, yeah.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah. That multidisciplinary kind of approach is so critical. Um, I think it requires<br />both specialization and, uh, willingness, like multidisciplinary collaboration across teams to, to<br />do it. Right.<br />Cory Miller: Well, and we talked a lot about boundaries, pushing boundaries, and it seems to<br />me too, it&#8217;s like there&#8217;s probably some mental boundaries we put ourselves in if we think about it<br />as just, oh, this is a [00:37:00] problem and I don&#8217;t want to do it.<br />But I think what I hear from you too, Sarah, is like, Well, this, the, the regulations, the policies,<br />the things that govern this have actually created your canvas. You know, if we look at it like that<br />and we go Exactly. And then I love the challenge actually, like Chris going like, well, what can<br />cools, like even cross teams, we got a challenge, but let&#8217;s look at it as this opportunity to do<br />something really cool.</p>



<p>Like when you said the awards and stuff, like love that you&#8217;re like, do such a good job with this<br />challenge. They, you could actually win hearts and awards, you know? Exactly. And I think that&#8217;s<br />for creative people, I think that&#8217;s gotta be a stoking fire of like motivation. Oh, absolutely. An<br />inspiration.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah.<br />So that, like, nav wins an award ranks high on accessible websites in higher ed. Like what? I<br />mean, that&#8217;s just a perfect pair<br />Cory Miller: and that person out there trying to look, trying to do see here whatever to that<br />[00:38:00] information. They&#8217;ve, they&#8217;ve had these experts. Giving their creative talent to do it.<br />So there&#8217;s that other part of like, somebody got to make sure they didn&#8217;t miss that part of the<br />website or whatever was happening in the project.<br />So exactly like, how many wins do we need? People, , , you know, like, and Chris, you&#8217;re gonna<br />get your chance to talk tech too. Um, but I really, I really love this, like the words I hear from you,<br />Sarah, particularly as designer, you know, artistic and creative. You go, you said, doesn&#8217;t have<br />to restrict, doesn&#8217;t have to pro prohibit anything, can actually blossom and grow your creativity.<br />If you, if you look again, we&#8217;re talking about mind shifts and we say, Hey, this is just the canvas I<br />get to create on. I love that. So what else comes to your mind when we talk, when you&#8217;re talking<br />to creative teams and people really trying to make sure the experience is great? What are the<br />things that pop up to you as you&#8217;ve worked with clients and, and the teams?<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, uh, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, [00:39:00] but just.<br />Taking the, knowing that you don&#8217;t have to be an expert at this thing. Like, and really, again, I<br />can&#8217;t hit home enough, like collaborating and, and building kind of an extension of your team to<br />support accessibility is so critical. Um, and putting resources towards that.<br />Um, whether that&#8217;s in-house or, or with an agency. Um, you know, I look at our own design team<br />as a great example. Like we, we definitely stay up on knowledge as it affects, you know, the, the<br />work that we&#8217;re working on. Um, but even our team who is talking about accessibility all the<br />time, We still ha have experts specifically dedicated to accessibility within our organization, our<br />QA team, who we can collaborate and lean on to ensure that the work that we are designing<br />and putting out into the world is tru truly accessible.<br />And so I, I just wanna really hit home like if you, if [00:40:00] you, um, are feeling maybe a little<br />overwhelmed, like, how do, how do I do this? Lean on people who know how to do it. Um, and<br />um, yeah,<br />Cory Miller: I think you all have modeled that for me in our discussions leading up to this. You<br />really have modeled it. We, I won&#8217;t get into the exact details, but when I was saying, Hey, we&#8217;re<br />gonna, okay, we got our date and all that, you all started asking these questions.<br />I didn&#8217;t think about that. And they were accessibility questions like naturally. But what I really,<br />really appreciated about you three, why we&#8217;re like working with really super talented people that<br />are also humble is you all team approached that I think Sarah, you&#8217;re like, okay, I think, I think<br />it&#8217;s this, but let me, I&#8217;m gonna go, I&#8217;m gonna go chase that with a team.<br />Chris, same way. And you guys were collaborating and I think what you all have modeled, what<br />you&#8217;re talking about the client should do is really look at this like it&#8217;s not on one particular person.<br />Yeah. Embrace the team concept. [00:41:00] We, we care. And that&#8217;s why as a team, we&#8217;re<br />gonna figure this out together.<br />Mike Klanac: Yeah. Yeah. It&#8217;s a, a perpetually changing topic. It&#8217;s guidelines are evolving,<br />browsers are evolving. The tools that people use are always changing. So if you&#8217;re an expert<br />one day, by the next day, you have more learning to do. And the way that we get around that is<br />by leaning on each other as a team, uh, and thinking about it as sort of a topic that we all need<br />to stay fresh on, um,<br />Cory Miller: and just care about.<br />I mean, this whole conversation evolved because you and I were talking to Mike, you know, and<br />I&#8217;m aware of the work you all do, and. You know, through us talking, you go, gotta have Chris,<br />gotta have Sarah on this call. That&#8217;s my, that&#8217;s You have a bigger team. Absolutely. You all have<br />a bigger team of course.<br />But you&#8217;re like, that&#8217;s a great model. So like we had you start with leadership in making those<br />decisions and then we&#8217;re gonna talk about creativity and then we&#8217;re gonna talk about tech. And<br />then you all have even lighten. Say there&#8217;s somebody else that [00:42:00] might not be in that<br />spec, but they&#8217;re the ones publishing the post or whatever it is to the site.</p>



<p>Exactly. Yeah. I think we&#8217;ve modeled this like cross-disciplinary, I think you said that too, Sarah<br />is like, okay, we, when we&#8217;re having these conversations, we do need leadership, do need tech,<br />we do need design. And probably the people actually doing this, the work, like into the world,<br />probably all need to be somehow represented in that conversation.<br />So I think I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m digressing from your subject, Sarah, but I just go, I think that just, again,<br />models, it&#8217;s a holistic whole team approach. We&#8217;re, we&#8217;re not gonna get it perfect, but we&#8217;re<br />gonna figure it out together. Absolutely. So I I love that too. I think you&#8217;ve given permission to<br />take some burden off Sarah, as like, yes.<br />You don&#8217;t have to be aid<br />Sarah Gless: as long as you lean on, on, on your, your internal teams or consultants in that, in<br />that area<br />Cory Miller: Care. Lean on your team. Yes. Try to make the best decisions, get the best<br />[00:43:00] experience. You may not win the award every single time, but hey, allowing someone<br />to do that, which probably has a fr I can&#8217;t imagine the frustration someone might feel trying to<br />get actually this cool tool called the internet, but Oh, tripped up like one of the best<br />communication tools ever invented in human history, yet there&#8217;s significant part of our population<br />that can&#8217;t get to it.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah. It&#8217;s like in the states, one in four, um, have a disability and I think globally<br />it&#8217;s one in six. Like think about those numbers. It&#8217;s like 25% in the us.<br />Cory Miller: That can&#8217;t,<br />Sarah Gless: that you may not be communicating with today on your website.<br />Cory Miller: I, uh, see again, you just go like, so let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s make this for a second, Mike.<br />I&#8217;m curious about this, but you two chime in. You go. If we were gonna say like, just make it a<br />business decision. If I went to any corporate leader, business leader in America and said, what if<br />you could get [00:44:00] 20% more than your gi, like, what if you could tap this market, Mike,<br />like from a market size, what if just from a business, okay, let&#8217;s take, take the pure human<br />element and you go, everybody, every business is looking for new markets to build and expand<br />on.<br />And you go the stat that&#8217;s you just shared, Sarah goes 20% of the popul. That, that, that if we<br />just embrace this right thing to do thing, you can get access to that. And imagine just from a<br />pure business standpoint, that market that&#8217;s served better than any they get anywhere else.<br />They&#8217;re gonna talk, they&#8217;re gonna share, do business here, do work here, because they&#8217;re<br />gonna be your most vocal evangelists.<br />So Mike, like from a pure business standpoint, and I go, let&#8217;s add it to the thing cuz this STA is<br />like we all think about the new markets that we could try to break into, you know, or grow our<br />existing thing. And you all just said, by the way, everybody ha you know, has a hard time with<br />this subject, but we&#8217;re giving you a [00:45:00] huge part of the population.<br />You could serve extremely well.<br />Mike Klanac: Again, yes. Massive opportunity. And, you know, we have so many conversations<br />where, where we will, um, sit and deliberate over customer journeys or you know, how to adjust<br />content in a way to gain just that slight advantage, that percentage change, that 1%, 2% change<br />in conversion or experience improvement.<br />And here&#8217;s an opportunity if you really think about it, to cater to a, you know, one in four people<br />in the United States. That&#8217;s a dramatic improvement. And, and that alone justifies, you know,<br />thinking about this start to finish. It&#8217;s just an incredible opportunity. Again, uh, it&#8217;s a no-brainer.<br />Cory Miller: I&#8217;ve told you all, I want Modern Tribe to do some stickers around these things that<br />I&#8217;ve heard as like core values should be accessibility.<br />Yeah. But it&#8217;s also like, Hey, uh, I got a secret. Do you wanna grow your business? Do the right<br />thing? Like, [00:46:00] just service me on the shirt. . Yeah. Get it on the shirt. Cause I need a<br />shirt for that. You know, I&#8217;m a, I&#8217;m a swag geek Mike. But anyway, I digress. . No, we&#8217;re too, it&#8217;s<br />all good. . No, and I, I think that&#8217;s another thing I&#8217;ve learned from y&#8217;all too, is like, hey, we can be,<br />this can be a subject that we get kinda tense about because we don&#8217;t know all the answers.<br />What I got from you, Sarah, was uh, you took, I think you took a big, big load of perfectionism,<br />expectation, worry, fear of people and release them to say, care about it. Get your team. Yes.<br />Like that&#8217;s the two I got when you&#8217;re looking at design. And that doesn&#8217;t mean just the design<br />team. That means the people who are out there publishing content on the website too.</p>



<p>Absolutely. You know, lean on your team and don&#8217;t exclude anybody. Include everybody in this<br />conversation and it matters. Anything else, Sarah, on design and creativity you wanted to<br />share? .<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, I mean, I, I&#8217;ll echo I think a lot of what we&#8217;ve already talked about, but if you<br />could just, [00:47:00] at the end of the day, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s about putting yourself in those folks&#8217; shoes.<br />And if, I think a great place to do that is by talking to those people, testing those people. Um, I, I<br />think that&#8217;s something that we, we don&#8217;t, you know, as a, um, a, a world , uh, probably do<br />enough of, um, and so empathy, empathy, empathy, just, you know, do the right thing, um, and,<br />and make it a value that you actually follow through with.<br />Cory Miller: Um, yep. Okay. I know you&#8217;re gonna have more to this chair. Thank you for sharing<br />the creativity. I think those are powerful messages that can release and really free people up to<br />use that creativity, use that, those innovative skills in such a really cool way. Yeah. Okay. So we<br />talked about leadership, talked about creativity and design.<br />Now let&#8217;s talk about the nuts and bolts, how this stuff works. Like [00:48:00] Chris. Uh, so you&#8217;re<br />back in, I know you work a lot with your team, uh, Sarah&#8217;s team, Mike&#8217;s team, um, in delivering<br />to the client. Um, when we talk about development, and you, you&#8217;ve, you&#8217;ve surprised me a<br />couple times on this Bec and, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s something that we just see.<br />It&#8217;s cuz you care about the subject, you know, you care about this work, but you&#8217;ve been able to<br />give some really good perspective too. But when we kind of venture into this third phase for<br />subject about accessibility, it&#8217;s the technical side. What sticks out to you? Uh, I always start with<br />you.<br />Chris Kindred: You&#8217;ve gotta make it part of your culture.<br />And in order to do that, that means that when you are hiring, you&#8217;ve gotta actually be looking to<br />make sure that you&#8217;re hiring people that believe the same. And, uh, it&#8217;s very difficult to always<br />create great accessible things if the, the people you&#8217;re looking at to bring on board don&#8217;t believe<br />the same thing.<br />[00:49:00] So it starts kind of there. It starts with making sure you get the right people in the right<br />seats and, and that, uh, piece of it. Um, after that there&#8217;s a little bit of understanding why, why<br />we&#8217;re doing this. And, um, one of the things that I like to kind of explain is that accessibility over<br />time has become the norm for, for so many places.<br />Um, think about it as, uh, curb cutouts right at crosswalks. Um, it&#8217;s so that it&#8217;s easier for<br />wheelchairs to get up onto the sidewalk. And, and it&#8217;s such a normal thing to see now. Um,<br />when you&#8217;re getting ready to cross the street and you hit the, the walk button, when it changes,<br />it makes a noise. Well, it&#8217;s because people found out, hey, we need to make this more<br />accessible for other people.<br />And, and they need to be able to get from one side of the street to the other. [00:50:00] And it, it,<br />it just, it, it becomes part of your everyday interaction and it becomes so normal that it, it, it just<br />becomes part of what you do. The same applies building a website. The same applies for the<br />technical side of these things.<br />When you&#8217;re building a form, you just, it, it, it is, it, it has to be ingrained in your culture that<br />that&#8217;s the normal way of doing that. You build it as an accessible form and you don&#8217;t cut corners.<br />Where, um, Somebody that&#8217;s not building it accessible or maybe somebody that doesn&#8217;t know or<br />is ignorant of how to build it accessible.<br />Um, would, would be doing that. You know, um, braille is another great example of having like a<br />braille inside a building trying to find where a, um, a, a hotel room is or an office is, that kind of<br />thing. You, it becomes normal and therefore you start [00:51:00] implementing it. You come to<br />expect it. And that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a big<br />piece.<br />Mike Klanac: I, I just wanna jump in there, Chris, cause I think. The part that ties this all<br />together is the fact that those items you mentioned, which were initially built for accessible<br />purposes, how, how many other benefits have they shown to perhaps people with different<br />forms of acce, uh, disability or just really anyone like a curb cutout has, su has become a<br />convenience.<br />Um, the noise. I often just can hear that and it becomes a benefit to my experience not being a<br />disabled person. Um, and, and so those, those changes have, have become innovations for all<br />of us.</p>



<p>Chris Kindred: You, you mentioned a really good point there. Um, there&#8217;s different levels of, uh,<br />disability, let&#8217;s say. Yes. Um, you, you&#8217;ve got permanent disabilities, which are, are people that,<br />that aren&#8217;t going to get over whatever disability they have.<br />Mm-hmm. . And, and you also have, [00:52:00] uh, you know, that&#8217;s, uh, Loss of limb kind of<br />thing. Maybe not being able to type, not being able to hear, not being able to see those kinds of<br />things. Uh, you also have a concept of a temporary disability.<br />Uh, we, we&#8217;ve<br />all experience things like getting your eyes dilated and not being able to look at a website, uh,<br />that, that can really mess with your mind a little bit.<br />If, if a website has all the text way too close together, say you need to call your, uh, eye doctor<br />right after you left and you pull up their website on your phone and you can&#8217;t find the phone<br />number because you, your eyes are dilated. Um, yeah. Now, and there there&#8217;s also this concept<br />of situational disability.<br />Um, very similar. But, uh, say you&#8217;re sitting next to your four-year-old and on the couch and<br />you&#8217;re flipping through videos on your phone and you have the volume off cuz you don&#8217;t know<br />what somebody&#8217;s gonna say and you don&#8217;t want your four year old to hear it. Um, You know that<br />that&#8217;s another [00:53:00] case of an opportunity, that if they have transcripts on that video, all of<br />a sudden, you know what they&#8217;re talking about without having to maybe have your four year old<br />say a word they shouldn&#8217;t.<br />Um, you know, it, the, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s this other concept a, around situational disabilities, um,<br />that I, it kind of hits home with me in particular because, um, there&#8217;s this level of like your<br />emotional state when you&#8217;re looking at a website, um, maybe your, your ability to actually have<br />like all the right, be in the right state of mind when you&#8217;re going to a, a website.<br />And it, uh, it, my, my daughter was born with a congenital heart defect. She was life flighted from<br />the hospital three days after she was born to a hospital five hours away.<br />Um,<br />My wife went with [00:54:00] her on, on the life flight, and we were extremely thankful she was<br />able to, but uh, here we are. I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m five hours away.<br />I&#8217;m getting ready to get in the car. There was a blizzard that night. There, there was just all kinds<br />of things going on, and I&#8217;ve gotta try to figure out how to get to this hospital and how to, um, find<br />my family, my newborn baby, all of this stuff. Uh, yeah. Eric Meyer does a very good talk on this.<br />Um, I, I think it was a, a list of part talk some, something like that.<br />Um, but it, it is a, a, a, it, it specifically talks about, uh, I think designing in a crisis or designing<br />for crisis. And, you know, if, if your mind&#8217;s not where it needs to be to read the information on a<br />website and you&#8217;re looking for how to get to an emergency room from the airport, And [00:55:00]<br />you are scrolling through a website.<br />I, I know websites pretty well. I&#8217;ve been reading websites my whole life, and I know that normally<br />there&#8217;s an address in the bottom left or right side of most websites. But if you&#8217;re trying to do that<br />looking through tiers, it&#8217;s much more difficult. And so there&#8217;s this level of, um, just because the,<br />there&#8217;s this level of morality that we talked about before, it&#8217;s the right thing to do.<br />But also it, it&#8217;s, it, it doesn&#8217;t, it, it can apply to anybody at any point in time. And you want to<br />make sure you&#8217;re being inclusive of all of those potential situations, especially when it&#8217;s, um, you<br />know, good or, or bad or, you know, education has alerts and all kinds of, there&#8217;s just, it, it<br />permeates through the entire industry.<br />Cory Miller: So before I come back to, to you, Chris, because I want you to put, uh, what the<br />question I&#8217;ll ask when I digress for a second with Sarah [00:56:00] is, uh, think about the<br />technical person on the other side in that seat and the challenges they have. But, you know,<br />Sarah, you, you do design. You know, you think about from the purpose of a website.<br />If I&#8217;m an er, I mean, Chris, you just said a hundred percent of people on that website, what do<br />they want to know? I wanna get to that building as fast as humanly possible. So Sarah, from a<br />pure design ux ui, that&#8217;s the purpose of a website. Is it not? Like, give people to the thing you<br />and your situational, uh, uh, experience.<br />Chris made me think. That&#8217;s, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s take aside for a second. Accessibility. That&#8217;s just what<br />you wanna do with the website. Like absolutely. How do I, they are hunting, how do I put it right<br />in front of them? You know what I&#8217;m saying? Like from the design side .<br />Sarah Gless: Yes. Like know your audiences, [00:57:00] all of them prioritize, you know, and,<br />and ensure that you&#8217;re talking to them, you&#8217;re listening to them, you&#8217;re testing that work, and you</p>



<p>know that it&#8217;s going to be there in, in a variety of situations.<br />It&#8217;s not just about slapping your brand on a website. It&#8217;s about ensuring that that experience is<br />meeting users where they&#8217;re at and serving their needs and, and, um, understanding the tests<br />they need to complete and, and designing to that. Um,<br />Cory Miller: like I go back to what you said, and this is reverberating now, and how deep, well,<br />what you said earlier is good accessibility is good design, and you go.<br />I mean, we can take it aside, all of this and just go, that&#8217;s the purpose. You wanna get people to<br />the thing they need to do. You want to empathize, use the word you used earlier, Sarah too, is<br />like, empathize. What are they trying to get done? Okay. I&#8217;m a, whatever the organization, Chris,<br />you just laid it out.<br />It&#8217;s blindingly obvious, the location. Think about that for restaurants. [00:58:00] Think about that<br />for any, any business, any organization, nonprofits, like, they come to you by the way, and<br />they&#8217;re looking for something and as fast and efficiently as you can get that to &#8217;em. So I go back<br />to your comment now, it&#8217;s even more deeper.<br />It&#8217;s like good accessibility is a good design because it&#8217;s about the action you&#8217;re trying to help that<br />person get to, right?<br />Sarah Gless: Absolutely. Yeah.</p>



<p>Chris Kindred: I, I would even take it a step further and say, good acceptability is usability. Mm-<br />hmm. Uh, it,</p>



<p>it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not just the design, but. It, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s the total package of it.<br />It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s making sure that that button, when it&#8217;s clicked, you know, it was clicked and that it&#8217;s not<br />going to do something unexpected. You know, taking, taking it back to a technical point of view,<br />you know, making sure to know how to make sure a screen reader is announcing that button<br />that it was clicked um, making sure that, uh, the, the person knew what that button button<br />[00:59:00] was going to do and not just say, click here. You know, that making it clear<br />that<br />that&#8217;s what was going to happen when that button was clicked is a key aspect to it.<br />Cory Miller: So, Mike, I just go back down. Sorry. Go ahead, Sarah.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, I was just gonna go back to like what Mike said earlier about like, there&#8217;s<br />also like kind of these like side effects that are good side effects when you, when you design,<br />um, um, whatever the experience is, whether it&#8217;s a curb or a website, um, to be accessible, you<br />have all these.<br />Additional benefits for folks that may not have disabilities. So like in the case of the, um, the,<br />you know, the button to call the ER is not visible. Well, what if you designed it to be, well, I bet<br />you&#8217;re gonna pick up not just ensuring that like it&#8217;s accessible, but also a lot of users who may<br />not have disabilities, um, still struggle to find things on websites.<br />So like, you know, they&#8217;ll be able to get their tasks done. Um, professor too, I know it&#8217;s a very<br />hyper [01:00:00] specific example, but, but it does help provide like context, this bigger idea,<br />right?<br />Cory Miller: Hey Sarah, I think no, it&#8217;s a like proving you all&#8217;s point is the it. Let&#8217;s add another<br />one, Mike, to the first part you said, let&#8217;s add another one if, if you only use accessibility as to<br />make your site the best converting, most efficient tool for communicating to your customers.<br />We just like backed into, uh, because you, we&#8217;ve all gone back to these, like the usability thing.<br />If you&#8217;re forced to look at like, okay, let&#8217;s pull up JAWS or whatever tools you all use and<br />recommend for your clients, and let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s go at it from that perspective. You&#8217;ve empathized with<br />the customer and you think if we just put it under marketing or sales, I go, this is the exercise<br />most organizations should be doing.<br />Because you&#8217;re gonna go to the level and you&#8217;re gonna have to think about, I&#8217;m just talking the<br />business case. Okay? Every website [01:01:00] needs to spur an action, like we&#8217;re trying to lead<br />them to something. It could be a sale, it could be the address of the emergency room, it could<br />be whatever it is. I just go from the business case, Mike, like, this is an exercise that all of us<br />should be doing.<br />Because if you&#8217;re in Chris&#8217;s situation, you&#8217;re like, isn&#8217;t it clear? Everybody, everybody in the room<br />know what the key thing here is we&#8217;re trying to get people to the emergency room physically.<br />That informs design, it informs technical, but. Here&#8217;s another business case we should add.<br />Mike Klanac: Absolutely. Yeah, and it&#8217;s really inspiring to like see the conversation.</p>



<p>I think. As an entire, in the, across the world, evolve from being one where like the, the, the talk<br />that, that Chris just provided it, it probably used to have just been about like how to use like alt<br />tags. Like 10 years ago it would&#8217;ve been like, how do we tag content? And now it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s crossed<br />into like more of a phil philosophical understanding that, hey, this is, this is, um, this is [01:02:00]<br />good business.<br />This is a usability opportunity, this is a chance to empathize with our users. This is a chance to,<br />um, improve customer and user journeys and, and, uh, make it easier for you to check out or to<br />get the information that you need. Um, so it&#8217;s, I just am it, it, I, I&#8217;m, I like that the dots are starting<br />to be connected and that this conversation has changed from just like a very sort of niche<br />technical, how do I.<br />Do these things that I have to do, because otherwise I&#8217;m gonna get in trouble to look at all of this<br />opportunity that we have to incorporate this thinking to better serve our audience that affects,<br />that, improves our business and makes everybody happier. I mean, uh, it connects a lot of dots.<br />Cory Miller: It&#8217;s cool. I, I&#8217;m not exaggerating, but maybe we should rename this panel to how to<br />build a successful website.<br />Yeah. , I mean, I know I&#8217;m exaggerating a little bit, but I go, like, when you were talking through<br />that, Sarah, I thought [01:03:00] that is a focusing feature. It makes us ask the question, what&#8217;s<br />this all about? What are we trying to do? Well, if we can hit it in all these scenarios, we&#8217;ve<br />crystal, we&#8217;ve used it as an exercise honestly, to crystallize what we&#8217;re trying to get from it and<br />pave the way, like that&#8217;s the purpose of website, right?<br />Mm-hmm. , so Absolutely. Okay. I&#8217;m preaching the choir, but I&#8217;m just hearing what you&#8217;re saying<br />and going, yeah. We should. Totally. I think the other title is it&#8217;s not a problem, it&#8217;s an opportunity,<br />you know? Yeah. Okay. Chris, I have veered all the way, but I think it&#8217;s been good. We need this<br />out in the world. We need people to hear these things and appreciate you all sharing so<br />authentically with this.<br />So, back to the question, Chris, I&#8217;m gonna get back to you. So from a technical standpoint,<br />there&#8217;s, on your clients, you&#8217;ve, you&#8217;ve talked to a number, I mean number of teams in the<br />technical side. And you know, part of my question here is trying to help the leaders listening to<br />other people, the other parts of this team understand [01:04:00] there are issues like Sarah did<br />for design that designers have, there&#8217;s somewhere technical.<br />What are the things that stick out to you, you know, those challenges people the technical side<br />has when they&#8217;re working on this particular subject of accessibility?<br />Chris Kindred: Uh, I, I would say it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s keeping up with the changes as they come. Um,<br />that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s one of the big ones. Uh, you know, there, there are different requirements.<br />Uh, those, there&#8217;s more stringent requirements when it comes to WIC ag, which is if, if you&#8217;re a<br />front-end developer and, and backend developers to, uh, knowing what the requirements are to<br />hit certain levels, depending on kind of going back into the legal side of it, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re certain<br />you&#8217;re gonna be required to hit a certain level of accessibility.<br />And knowing what those are and how they change over time is a big piece of it. And, uh,<br />[01:05:00] at, at Modern Tribe, we really lean a lot on our front end developers for keeping up<br />with that. But also we communicate as a whole and, and we make sure that everybody&#8217;s, you<br />know, doing code reviews for each other and, and that kind of thing to make sure that, uh, if, if<br />there is an accessibility, um, Item that we address it before it goes out, uh, and that, uh, those<br />kinds of things.<br />So it, it, I would say the, the biggest issue is trying to just stay relevant with those, um,<br />accessibility changes. Every time a browser comes out with something new, you&#8217;ve gotta kind of<br />go back and look at it and see if it changed the way you need to implement something based<br />upon those accessibility requirements.<br />So, yeah.<br />Cory Miller: So from, so from the technical side, there&#8217;s how, how any general guidance you&#8217;d<br />give for how to kind of stay touched. It seemed to [01:06:00] me, you know, from a team<br />standpoint is we just regularly have the discuss. Like the topic comes up regularly enough,<br />however that is, but those developers that want to contribute, technical people that want to<br />contribute to it.<br />Any, any thoughts there about how they could try to keep up and places to go?</p>



<p>Chris Kindred: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, so there&#8217;s, we, we use a lot of different tools and,<br />and that kind of thing, but you can always go to the WAC website and, and that&#8217;s going to tell<br />you exactly what you need to hit and, and how to perform certain actions in an accessible way.<br />Uh, but, but there&#8217;s also some other things out there. Um, uh, I A A P certifications, uh, the, this<br />is a, um, it, it&#8217;s a, uh, they offer a web accessibility certification that you can get and, uh, it, it<br />teaches you a, about web accessibility, and you [01:07:00] can go through the whole, whole<br />process there and, uh, you know, There&#8217;s no better way to prove that accessibility&#8217;s serious to<br />you than getting some kind of certification For sure.<br />Um, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not, uh, an easy thing to do. There. There are other certifications out there too. Um,<br />that&#8217;s just the first one that came to my mind. But, uh, th those types of certifications are, are<br />nice to be able to go out and do and, and learn. Um, and if you&#8217;re making it part of your culture,<br />then you&#8217;re always talking about it.<br />It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s like, like I said, it&#8217;s part of those code reviews. Um, if, if, if I&#8217;m reviewing somebody&#8217;s<br />code and I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m seeing it, I&#8217;m learning too. If they implemented something that I may not have<br />been aware of yet, uh, that, that&#8217;s a big piece as well. So mm-hmm. that, that being able to<br />communicate back and forth about &#8217;em, uh, is, is also super beneficial.<br />Cory Miller: Mike, did you have something to add? probably jumped the gun<br />Mike Klanac: a little bit. I, I [01:08:00] think I was going to start to mention tooling a little and its<br />role in this and, and Chris hit it a, a touch there. But, um, yeah, I mean this is a, this is a, a open<br />conversation. So, you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s something that it, you have to kind of revisit periodically.<br />And the, the tooling, one of the things that it does besides kind of educate you and their, their<br />job is to stay current on creating a system of scans that, um, enforces certain standards. Um, it,<br />it, it allows you to kind of revisit it on a regular basis, uh, and that there is some. There&#8217;s a huge<br />role for that, right?<br />Like it no, no human can actually stay on top of all of the changes at all times. The, that<br />provides some nice rails. And yeah, as we get into this, perhaps this last section in a moment<br />where we talk about the, the, the content publishing or the sort of the, the end user role in<br />[01:09:00] accessibility, um, I think that tooling is a, a key<br />Cory Miller: part of that as well.<br />Okay. So I want to ask Chris one more thing. So this whole banner is accessibility for sure, but<br />WordPress accessibility, I think that&#8217;s the two parts of this why I asked you all to do this<br />particular topic because, you know, accessibility, but you also know the nuances with<br />WordPress like you&#8217;re experts.<br />Travis has been around for a very long time doing some really cool stuff with WordPress forever.<br />So, uh, Chris, my question is now accessibility with WordPress. Things that come out, stand out<br />with you with this amazing open source software that we love that&#8217;s used around the globe and<br />it&#8217;s great solutions for clients.<br />Um, what things stick out there with WordPress accessibility particularly?<br />Chris Kindred: Uh, well, well first open source software. It, it is always, um, it, people are<br />always talking about accessibility. If you go into the, the WordPress Slack, you can see people<br />trying [01:10:00] to focus on accessibility and try to get accessibility into, uh, everything.<br />Uh, you know, I guess it was two or three years, Gutenberg did a big accessibility audit on all<br />the blocks, and that was really important for WordPress to be doing to help move the editor itself<br />forward and make it more accessible for content editors. Um, but as Gutenberg&#8217;s matured and,<br />and become the block editor, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s become everybody&#8217;s focus.<br />There&#8217;s this new opportunity and, and I think that, uh, As we continue to implement these<br />accessible designs that our, our amazing designers have put together and, and our developers<br />have gone in and, and put a lot of work behind the templates and building out the header and<br />the footer and, and everything, there&#8217;s this, uh, there&#8217;s this content piece that is going to have to<br />be implemented and most of the time that&#8217;s by the client.<br />And [01:11:00] the, the best way to help them would be by creating plugins that test the<br />accessibility before it&#8217;s ever even published. And being able to interface with a service that<br />allows you to check that and give feedback in a meaningful way to a publisher and being able to<br />tell them, this is inaccessible and here is why.<br />Because that&#8217;s a key point too, making sure they know why, so they don&#8217;t always have to fix it<br />every time they do it. Um, and, and being able to flag that the way that editor works now</p>



<p>compared to way it worked with the classic editor. It, it gives you so many more opportunities for<br />that kind of, um, benefit.<br />So, so creating a, a plugin, you know, it, it&#8217;s something that I, I know a few places have tried to<br />create these, and, and there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s an opportunity to be able to, to do that. And I, I really, I&#8217;m<br />looking forward to, [01:12:00] uh, potentially participating and creating a plugin that can handle<br />that kind of thing. Um, you know, flagging it, uh, checking it from the front, inside, all of those<br />kinds of things for a user, um, that, that would be a, a huge benefit to the community as a whole<br />and, and to content creators.<br />Cory Miller: I, I think you pointed at something that I often don&#8217;t, I, I kind of gloss over, but the<br />fact that there&#8217;s so many people, the power of WordPress is so many people collaborating and<br />caring about this. Yes. This isn&#8217;t a new thing to WordPress. It&#8217;s what I. It&#8217;s, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re<br />imperfect, but as a community. And the core software has a very passion for diversity, equity,<br />inclusion in that conversation has been championed by people like you and others in the<br />community to make sure WordPress is always accessible.<br />But having said that, there&#8217;s still things, there&#8217;s still things that we need to account for. And you<br />brought those up as like, well, we did in the discussions. It&#8217;s like you can do all the [01:13:00]<br />front end work and then you&#8217;re down to the person that just hasn&#8217;t had the opportunity to be<br />trained a little bit.<br />And the block editor, there are things that need, that are being discussed actively and worked<br />on in the community to need to be done to ensure the other part of this. We got the great first<br />site, but now, okay, we&#8217;re turning over and I, I think it was, Sarah mentioned one of the previous<br />conversations is one, you know, a blog post.<br />Could break the accessibility. You know, one thing that would just because you have so much<br />power, I mean, it&#8217;s the beauty of Good Berg and the block editor, you have so much opportunity<br />there, . You also have an opportunity to kind of go into and break your, all your good work<br />you&#8217;ve done to try to be accessible.<br />Okay. Anything else on technical? And then I wanna divide, dive in with the remain time and<br />thank you all for your time and sharing your expertise so openly. Um, the next section, just about<br />that side of this whole thing is like the other part of the team that might not be in some of the<br />core conversations but are executing, doing the work.<br />[01:14:00] Anything else? Chris, though, before we shift gears into that?<br />Chris Kindred: Uh, technical is such a code dependent thing that it could get. I, I could drown<br />you in what Aria labels mean and why and why not. But you know, the fact is if you&#8217;ve put a<br />culture in place around accessibility, then. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s something that your devs are going to be able<br />to help you with.<br />And, uh, it, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s just part of, part of the process.<br />Cory Miller: I&#8217;ve heard. I&#8217;ve, I think another theme in all this is like, if you&#8217;re a designer,<br />developer on the team in some way, uh, this is your webinar to go back if you need help in<br />reinforcements, saying, Hey, we need to embrace this. Um, because I know so many talented<br />designer developers, good hearts, wanna do the right thing, need the resources, you know?<br />Yeah. Need that collaboration.<br />Sarah Gless: Be champions of, yeah. [01:15:00] Making sure this, this is a conversation. Um,<br />and, and feel empowered to like, Take that upwards towards, towards leadership.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. And share this link afterwards so they Yeah. Can come in here us talk about<br />the amazing opportunity they have here. Yeah. Okay.<br />Thanks Chris. All right. So final section is just this part. You&#8217;ve done all the fronting work, you do<br />care, you&#8217;re doing all the efforts, but then there&#8217;s this situation you already mentioned that they<br />could break it on that particular page because of the power of some of the word and and the<br />lack of the resources and training and guidance.<br />So when we get to this side, the client publishing of all this, who wants to share, what do you got<br />locked and loaded? I wanna just kind of put it here. Cause I think this is another team<br />collaboration of like probably people that are oftentimes overlooked, blamed sometimes, and<br />just don&#8217;t have this side of it that we need to be thinking about from leadership all the way down<br />through the organiz.<br />Mike Klanac: [01:16:00] Yeah, this is a, a really important part of it that oftentimes gets<br />overlooked. Um, and that is just to be really clear, it&#8217;s that after these tools have been created, a</p>



<p>lot of accessibility thinking has gone into them, and then they are delivered to, um, you know, a,<br />a content publisher to, to maintain and to use for, for possibly up to five years.<br />Um, you&#8217;re at this key point where as a, maybe an agency partner supporting someone, like<br />you&#8217;re putting a lot of that power into their hands now to pick up that, that, that torch and<br />continue to run with it. Um, and there&#8217;s a really unfortunate metaphor here, which is, you know,<br />MySpace, you know, we can all recall MySpace.<br />It was really great. No longer exists today. They were very well intended. And at some point it<br />went from being this nice. Tidy page with a profile to music blaring and the thousands of like<br />scrolling pages and things [01:17:00] jumping out all over. And that&#8217;s because there was not<br />enough rails put into place for content publishers to be success successful for the long haul<br />there.<br />So we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve sort of come to the realization, and this is kind of part of like ergonomic thinking<br />and you know, you have to set these content publishers up for success. And the way that you<br />do that is not only in how you&#8217;re architecting the system, the publishing environment, um, to give<br />instruction, to make it just like intuitive and easy to use and sort of like heuristic and you can<br />kind of just, you can figure it out.<br />It&#8217;s simple. Um, but like training them on the idea of publishing accessible content because we,<br />no matter how many guardrails we put into place, if you&#8217;re not thinking about it, you will<br />eventually break the system by putting in. You know, content that is not accessible. Uh, so we<br />try to incorporate that into our training [01:18:00] process.<br />Um, and, and let, let be pretty candid upfront to say, you&#8217;ve got a, a wonderfully accessible site<br />right now. It won&#8217;t be this way if you put in concerning content with, you know, strange things<br />that, that perhaps like in the moment feel really exciting, but you know, they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re not<br />gonna, they&#8217;re not gonna work from an accessibility standpoint.<br />It&#8217;s something you need to continue to think about. Um,<br />Cory Miller: I mean, this goes back, that&#8217;s first part of it. Yeah. This goes back to your, your part<br />and two is the leader and the people making the decisions need to think about all of this that,<br />okay. Part one is just getting the infrastructure, the, the base. Part two is people have to operate<br />within that base and we need to be considerate and give ample resource.<br />To to hear because all of our good intentions could go away. . Yeah. When, when inadvertently<br />someone who does care, [01:19:00] makes a, makes a decision that affects it. So putting that<br />into the process is, is huge. And I think I&#8217;ve heard variously E three talk about the training and<br />the ongoing maintenance and upkeep of your knowledge about how these things operate, um,<br />isn&#8217;t a very important part of all of this.<br />Um, yes sir. Chris, you mentioned tooling or I think Mike got into tooling too earlier. So that<br />seems to be one part, as I&#8217;ve talked to you all, part of this is like just proper tooling to do some<br />as much as we can, as this continues to evolve and change with browsers and different<br />technology and stuff.<br />But, so can you talk to me a little bit about the tooling side?<br />Chris Kindred: Yeah. Uh, so. Tools we use, um, we use Site Improve Dubbo. Um, some of<br />those that what they&#8217;ll do is they&#8217;ll actually go out and put your, put the URL in there and it will<br />scrape your site and tell you what kind of, um, accessibility issues come up.[01:20:00]<br />Uh, they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re great tools that, that kind of thing helps a lot. And, and you can automate<br />that process to run weekly, daily, monthly, however often you want it to. Uh, and, and that&#8217;s a<br />really great check, but I, I really feel like you should be doing something before that. And, and<br />the easiest way to do that is by installing a browser extension on, you know, if you&#8217;re using<br />Chrome, Chrome has ax and you can install AX on your, on your browser, and then you can go<br />pull up your page and it&#8217;s gonna tell you the same stuff, but you&#8217;re just gonna catch it before<br />somebody else did.<br />You know, make it part of your publishing process that you publish a page. Go pull up X on, on<br />the front end and make sure that there&#8217;s not a glaring problem. Um, when you&#8217;re dealing with<br />Go ahead.<br />Sarah Gless: Go ahead. I was just gonna say even, even before that, um, too, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s the<br />training aspect that, that we mentioned earlier.<br />Um, you know, from [01:21:00] a kind of content side of things, established guidelines and, and<br />make sure that they&#8217;re accessible by everyone on your team that&#8217;s creating content and that</p>



<p>they&#8217;re updated regularly, um, as things change and evolve with, uh, within the accessibility<br />world. Um, so people are, are making good content from the start.<br />So we, we looked at it a little bit backwards, but I I, I like that because it, yeah, it kinda leads<br />back to that, that person,<br />Cory Miller: the two sides are seems like tools and training the two sides of the airplane, you<br />know? Um, so the,<br />Chris Kindred: there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s one more piece that I wanna mention is that you can always fix<br />what&#8217;s in the editor.<br />It&#8217;s not, you didn&#8217;t just destroy your site forever because you posted one piece of content that<br />was, uh, that had an accessibility problem, evaluate it, go back in and fix it. It&#8217;s not the, the<br />whole point is being aware. Yeah. It&#8217;s when you didn&#8217;t go back and fix it. It&#8217;s [01:22:00] knowing<br />it was there and ignoring it.<br />Those kinds of things that will really get you going along a<br />bad path,<br />Mike Klanac: right. I mean, people are gonna make mistakes. In fact, I&#8217;m assuming at some<br />point someone will look back at this webinar and think they said something incorrect. Um, the<br />point is that we care and we&#8217;re we&#8217;re trying to do the right thing.<br />Um, and, and so I think you&#8217;re right, Chris, like going back, if someone identifies an issue, you<br />can fix it. I mean, that&#8217;s the best thing about this is nothing set in stone here forever.<br />Cory Miller: That is the beauty of the web. I used to be in new newspapers, and when you<br />printed a mistake, it went out . I can&#8217;t imagine we had this opportunity to make it, to fix it.<br />Go back and fix it. Um, well, I, I like that. Any other thoughts on the training and tooling side?<br />Um, making sure, you know, I, I assume all this when you&#8217;re, we&#8217;re talking about like checklists<br />and workflows, like making [01:23:00] sure this is things you do with clients. Like, Hey, there&#8217;s<br />somebody in, not in this meeting and hasn&#8217;t been privy to all this<br />Here you go. Here&#8217;s some basic stuff to look at. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s style sheets. I don&#8217;t know if<br />that&#8217;s like, earlier you talk, you know, Sarah, about like the colors of your logo and then how<br />does that transit translate accessibly And, uh, Chris again, any, anything like that you think as<br />you&#8217;re, you&#8217;ve been working with clients for a long time with this particular thing.<br />What you do that kind of makes the difference for someone you know, is, are there style guides?<br />Are there. Typical things they do. How do you approach this from alus perspective on that<br />training? Like, do you build in like, you know, um, training with a team or I, you know, anything<br />on that regard?<br />Mike Klanac: I, I could probably add one more thing, which is that we, you know, there&#8217;s a lot of<br />intention in the, in the design and the construction of content, so I, if you do that right, [01:24:00]<br />the, the publishers experie.<br />Is pretty like straightforward. It&#8217;s about the quality of the content and the messaging and less the<br />construction of it, and therefore like there&#8217;s less opportunity to get creative at that point. You&#8217;re,<br />you&#8217;re sort of like focused on like what the message, the content&#8217;s trying to convey is, and not<br />so much how the looks and where it positions or if you do have some editorial power at that<br />point.<br />It&#8217;s from a predetermined set of, of configuration. So you&#8217;re like putting the content in and<br />flipping levers and hitting buttons from pre-approved standards that everyone was agreed, uh, in<br />agreement on and happened to be accessible. Um, so if that, that work upfront has been done<br />well, those are some of those guardrails and I, I think that that can, that can help continue<br />success into the future.<br />Chris Kindred: That&#8217;s where Gutenberg has made things so much easier [01:25:00] for, for us.<br />We can go in and create patterns and build out those patterns to be accessible and, and meet a<br />certain, um, layout that sales teams provided the front end to, to be able to do. And, and so<br />we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve said, okay, here&#8217;s, here&#8217;s a pattern you can use that we&#8217;ve already vetted as an<br />accessible pattern, and, and you don&#8217;t have to worry about it.<br />If you use this pattern, you&#8217;re good. And then you can use the next pattern. You&#8217;re good, and,<br />and you can kinda work your way down the page that way. And it, it makes things better for the<br />end user. And, you know, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s everybody&#8217;s goal here. How can we do what&#8217;s best for the<br />end user using WordPress to publish and then in turn their users<br />coming to the website.<br />Cory Miller: All right. Anything else on that? And before we do some takeaways,</p>



<p>Mike Klanac: I think that pretty much covers it.<br />Cory Miller: This has been like, I think it&#8217;s [01:26:00] beyond primer. What this is is helping one,<br />somebody that does want to care, that cares, takes some meaningful steps about holistically<br />embracing this. Um, and with really solid business and human reasons attached. And I think<br />part of this that I was surprised a little bit is just the thinking when we got into accessibility.<br />It&#8217;s like actually you can, you can make money doing the good thing, doing the right thing. Um,<br />Maybe more money because we&#8217;ve talked about the one in 6, 1, 1 in four in America in<br />particular. But, and, and then the situational that you did, Chris, permanent, situational,<br />temporary Mike, really sharing, um, the, that, that whole case to help us think about that.<br />Um, so I, I love it. And I think the big headline is don&#8217;t look at this as a problem. Look at this as<br />an opportunity. And I think you all have masterfully shared some really compelling, [01:27:00]<br />you can&#8217;t look away from reasons why this should be like the center of, not just the project, not<br />just the website Pro, but culturally as a, as an organization, how we&#8217;re gonna be in the world.<br />And I think it&#8217;s pretty, pretty awesome. Anything we missed? Anything you wanna share? Um,<br />that we didn&#8217;t touch?<br />Mike Klanac: I&#8217;ll just like, my final thought on this was, first of all, again, thank you Corey, for, for<br />recording this. I, I like the opportunity to sometimes approach these topics from a new angle<br />and, and specifically as it relates to accessibility.<br />There&#8217;s been a lot of talks and accessibility and a lot of times they do get pretty in the weeds.<br />Um, because that&#8217;s an important part of this is understanding the weeds and the, the specifics.<br />Um, but what I was, what really drew me to this conversation was the ability to take a step back<br />and, and think about, uh, this topic more holistically as it relates across all the layers of culture<br />and business.<br />Um, both like at a, working with an agency partner, but in your own organization and how doing<br />that, [01:28:00] um, can ultimately bring you a lot of success. So I appreciated the new angle on<br />it.<br />Cory Miller: Sarah, Chris, any any save takeaways or thought.<br />Sarah Gless: Yeah, I think like my, my biggest kind of takeaways are how critical it is for, um,<br />you know, organizations to truly like, resource for this.<br />Don&#8217;t, you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s kind of that idea of like, show don&#8217;t tell, like make it part of your values.<br />Sure. But then show it, right? And, and, and put resources towards it. I think that, um, is a<br />critical step in making sure this is truly valued, um, at your organization and that you&#8217;re<br />connecting with your, your audiences.<br />Chris Kindred: Uh, I, I really agree. Uh, I, I agree with everything that&#8217;s been said, but you<br />know, I, I think Mike talking along the points of, there&#8217;s a bunch of talks out there about<br />accessibility from a technical point of view, [01:29:00] from, uh, how to implement and, and<br />those kinds of things. But I, I think one of the places that struggles the most is, um,<br />Organizations understanding that it costs a lot of money to do that, and it, it costs a lot of money<br />because they&#8217;ve been going at it the wrong way, and they&#8217;ve been coming at it from kind of an<br />inside out, not an outside in, and not making it like sarason not making it part of your culture.<br />And if you can make it part of every piece, it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s not going to be as expensive as it is if you</p>



<p>have to remediate something once it&#8217;s all done. Uh, so it, it&#8217;s, um, this has been very eye-<br />opening to me to, I don&#8217;t think many people are looking at it from this direction. And I, I, uh, am</p>



<p>am excited to be a part of that.<br />Cory Miller: Well, thank you three for sharing. Uh, so openly, uh, your expertise and experience<br />about [01:30:00] this pretty vital, you know, topic that if we&#8217;re working on the web, it&#8217;s just, In<br />fact, it&#8217;s, we&#8217;ve illustrated some good points, but appreciate you all for being and sharing so<br />openly and taking your time. I know it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a Friday now as we&#8217;re recording, but, um, you have,<br />you have those clients waiting on you.<br />Mike, would you share a little bit how can someone heard what you all have shared and talk,<br />start the conversation with Modern Tribe.<br />Mike Klanac: Yeah, for sure. If anybody has a, a follow on question or wants to talk to Modern<br />Tribe about the work that we do, um, our website is, uh, t r i.be. Um, so you can Google Search<br />Modern Tribe, we pop up around there, uh, the first couple responses.<br />Um, you can also reach me@helloattri.be and um, You know, our goal is to be helpful. So I I<br />really, we do this quite often. If you just have a question, we&#8217;re happy to, to just just talk about</p>



<p>stuff. So it doesn&#8217;t always [01:31:00] have to be reaching out if you have a, a new project<br />opportunity. This is important to us.<br />We like to hear from people and, uh, yeah, build relationships with everyone in the space. So<br />that&#8217;s how you can reach us. And, and thanks again. And Corey, and then, and the work that<br />post status is doing, carrying these topics through, uh, to the audience. It, it&#8217;s really, really<br />important.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. I, I think we&#8217;ve got a couple more to topics to pull back because I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve<br />already identified some ones that I want to go.<br />I go, I think there&#8217;s more here that I kind of hear, heard that like it may be more, more a specific<br />treatment. So, but Sarah, Chris, Mike, thank you for today. Appreciate your time, what you do<br />and WordPress and the larger world, uh, out there. So have a great, uh, rest of your day. Thank<br />you for being here.<br />Cheers.<br />Mike Klanac: Good talk.<br />Cory Miller: Bye.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 15 Mar 2023 22:35:37 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 5";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148247";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-5/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86910:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> discuss a range of topics related to the development of their new product <a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a>,  including the importance of empathy in designing user interfaces, the challenges of marketing and selling products, and the need for developers to collaborate with others and develop non-technical skills. They each share their experiences from working on various projects over the years and offer insights and advice based on these experiences. </p></div>


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



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">60</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







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



<p>As the development of <a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a> continues, <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> continue to gain clarity on what is needed for their product to succeed. They discuss features and integration, free vs. paid versions, ensuring compatibility, and more, as they fold in their experience, expertise, and gathered feedback into the future strategy of their product business.</p>



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



<ul>
<li><strong>Cultivating empathy is important for developers.</strong> It&#8217;s essential to understand the needs of different users, particularly those who are not very tech-savvy or who come from different cultural backgrounds. Empathy helps create products that are more user-friendly and accessible to a broader audience.</li>



<li><strong>Collaboration is crucial for success.</strong> No matter how brilliant a product developer is, they can&#8217;t do everything on their own. They need a team of people with different skills and backgrounds to support them, whether it&#8217;s in terms of design, marketing, or other areas. Building a supportive team requires humility and a willingness to accept feedback and help from others.</li>



<li><strong>Failure is a necessary part of growth.</strong> Many product developers go through a difficult experience where they realize that their work isn&#8217;t as good as they thought it was. This experience can be humbling, but it&#8217;s also an opportunity to learn and grow. It&#8217;s important for developers to be open to feedback, to take risks, and to be willing to try new things, even if it means making mistakes along the way.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.stickermule.com/">Sticker Mule</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.canva.com/">Canva</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a></li>



<li><a href="https://unsplash.com/">Unsplash</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.stockunlimited.com/">Stock Unlimited</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



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



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



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



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



<h2>Session 5 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> [00:00:00] Session five, and I&#8217;m opening the comments on the YouTubes pop out. Hello? </p>



<p>Yeah, I should do this too. Okay. Oh, shouldn&#8217;t&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> the recorded bit, we&#8217;ll do it live.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Is there any other way? I mean,  </p>



<p>there&#8217;s no&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> one, no other way, but to do it live, at least for Corey and Corey  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Otherwise, there&#8217;s too much to think about. Exactly.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Who wants, who wants, uh, [00:01:00] Perfection. All right. So, hey everybody. This is, uh, Corey and Corey launching a WordPress product in public and session five. And, you know, life happens. And so I&#8217;m actually at a hospital. Uh, my brother, uh, got into the hospital earlier this week and just checking on him.  </p>



<p>He&#8217;s all good, by the way. Um, anyway, so session five.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Um, how was the jello? These are the things that matter. That&#8217;s true.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I have not asked. He&#8217;s not been able to eat, but, um, people are pretty awesome. Yeah. Here taking care of them. Good. Glad to hear it. Um, so first things first, we get our first feedback.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yep, yep.  </p>



<p>So after all of our discussion around, uh, The most important thing being feedback. How do we collect feedback? I built [00:02:00] into the plugin, um, with your guidance, you know, the most direct way, like I went, we could have just linked to a contact form, but I was like, we want this to be frictionless. So there&#8217;s a button right next to every.  </p>



<p>Big call to action that says, um, you know, give us feedback or something. Um, and so, and it worked, a little, a little relieved because I, I wound up doing some crazy email routing to get it all, um, signed up because, you know, one of the things with a new product is you don&#8217;t want to just like, you don&#8217;t want to pr optimize prematurely.  </p>



<p>You don&#8217;t want to pay, start paying for services. And so we are, um, using a number of email forwards from my registrar to a Gmail account to each of us using aliases and various Gmail accounts. So it&#8217;s a little more complicated. But that way [00:03:00] we&#8217;re not spending 16 bucks a month on Google Workspace, you know, before we&#8217;ve.  </p>



<p>Received an email. So, um, but yeah, the, the first email was positive or encouraging, I should say. Um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> yeah. And basically, do you, do you know him? Do you know&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> who it is? I, I don&#8217;t think so.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I don&#8217;t either. So that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s even better because it&#8217;s somebody that we, um, so I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll read it if you, if you want me to, Corey?  </p>



<p>Yeah. Yeah. So I, I don&#8217;t know his name and it looks like his last name, but we&#8217;ll keep that anonymous. Uh, nice start. I would love it if you could work on more fe than featured images. Good affirmation. Wanna be able to do it with just an image on a page. And he gave us a link. Um, this kinda&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> seems link, the link, just so you know, all of the emails will include, i, I auto appended the site, u r url.  </p>



<p>[00:04:00] Gotcha. So we have, um, you know, so we can go and do a little sneaky research.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah. Uh, looks like in New Hampshire, by the way, aren&#8217;t&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> you in New Hampshire? I am. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m, uh, or at least the site that it came from. Site that came from,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> yeah. Yeah. Uh, so what sticks out to me is, um, I mean, it&#8217;s one person, but it validates our second step, which is somewhere that can be used outside of the featured image.  </p>



<p>Um, right. And last week we were talking about like, is there an area in the right sidebar somewhere that is, you know, you can drag it there, it&#8217;s still a step like crop it, but like then you can pull it into a Gutenberg block kind of thing. Is what, do you have any thoughts on that? Like, and I&#8217;m trying to remember a conversation from last week too.  </p>



<p>I know you&#8217;re always tinkering too, so.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Right. I, unfortunately I haven&#8217;t been this week. Um, [00:05:00] yeah. I&#8217;ve been work, like you say, life gets in the way and work is part of life, and so, yep. Uh, for those who don&#8217;t know, I, uh, consult on the side or freelance on the side and, and these are the clients I&#8217;m always talking about.  </p>



<p>And so, you know, uh, we have a new design that needs to be implemented this week, so unfortunately side projects get put on, get paused. Yep. Um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> gotta have something, pay the bills and, um, no, no. I, I just curious cause you always kinda surprise me with something. I happen to mention a circle crop and you&#8217;re like, by the way, I did it.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m like, okay, . Um, cool. What, uh, I&#8217;m gonna, I haven&#8217;t looked recently, but how many downloads are we or installs are we up to?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Oh, good question.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I&#8217;m gonna do that right now.  </p>



<p>When I put Crop express, by the way, into the wordpress.org plugins thing. Mm-hmm. , there&#8217;s 1, [00:06:00] 2, 4, 4 things above ours, which is, I&#8217;ll have to follow up with that.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Okay. So, so we still have fewer than 10,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> which, you know, that lags, doesn&#8217;t it? Like they have these, some metrics or something on what displays and so it could be theoretically more, I think.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yep. And am I logged in? No. Um, and I wanna say that they took away the deeper analytics. Cuz, cuz I also, you know, since we&#8217;re talking about this, I have a strong suspicion that people are also kicking the tires. Um, so I suspect that people are, you know, installing, trying it, you know, to kind of follow along in our journey and experiencing that.  </p>



<p>You know, it is a limited plugin so far, and so we&#8217;re probably uninstalling it. Um, [00:07:00] so for me, like I talked about last week, this is, this is, you know, once you&#8217;re in public, this is a bit of a, um, urgency to start, like filling in those gaps. And I, I kind of personally, I like that like, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a lot of talk in the startup world about an entrepreneurship world in general of like, you know, if you&#8217;re not embarrassed by your first version that you released, then you&#8217;ve released too late.  </p>



<p>And I, I thankfully got over that fear of releasing years ago. But it, you know, I, I think the next step is usually this, which is the, like, okay, I&#8217;m in public, I&#8217;ve told a few people about it. Yes, I&#8217;m starting to collect feedback, but I&#8217;m also, you. I can look at the product and go, oh shoot, it&#8217;s missing this.  </p>



<p>Oh, I forgot about that. You know, so this is where, this is where we, we scramble as long as, uh, I, I can ,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> which is great. Like this is a good stage for, this isn&#8217;t our fa main [00:08:00] focus, but, um, I know, I know you probably have internal pressure for yourself. It&#8217;s like, I wanna get this going.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah. I mean the, the sooner we get these extra features in, the sooner we make our first million, you know, and then I don&#8217;t have to worry about client work anymore.  </p>



<p>So, I mean, that&#8217;s exactly, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the race. The other thing that, you know, I struggle with is a bit of an adult, A D H D. And, uh, when I have a project, you know, talking or, or a little voice in my head that&#8217;s telling me this is what I wanna be working on, I have a real hard time. Doing what I&#8217;m supposed to.  </p>



<p>So I&#8217;m being a good boy this week. But that&#8217;s definitely, I think part of my, if you can call it success, but at least part of my track record of launching so many things, is that for better or worse, I tend to be pretty self-indulgent and will often, you know, nights and weekends crank on something, even if it&#8217;s [00:09:00] not what I should be working on or what, yeah.  </p>



<p>Uh, the people around me are happy for me to be working on, but, you know, if if it&#8217;s yelling at me loud enough, then, then I, it&#8217;s hard to resist.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s hard because you can go, you can go off , just lose yourself because it&#8217;s fun, you know? But yeah. You&#8217;re talking about like 10 years for me is, is this Blitz Creek everything at it, you know.  </p>



<p>This is a great pace. Like the pressure or like if we can get it, we can get it. We&#8217;re good. Kind of moving forward. But I do feel those tendencies of like, uh, you slacked me and we&#8217;re like, we got our first feedback and I was like, heck yeah. . And it&#8217;s a great one is an affirmation. Mm-hmm. . Um, so here&#8217;s what I had on my to to-do list and I&#8217;ll give you an update.  </p>



<p>Um, I had Laney Page, talked to content journey, and Robbie, I did one of three. [00:10:00] I talked to Lindsay about content journey and getting their, how they source images was really fascinating. Um, I think there&#8217;s something here to that. Mm-hmm. What I wanted to talk to her more is like the more abstract thought of on page somebody land, you know, finds your post from organic traffic, whatever, and ad get on page and What&#8217;s that?  </p>



<p>We had that more abstract meta conversation about the role of an image. And, uh, she gave me a lot of good feedback about how they source it. Um, they do custom stock photography, so for clients, so they&#8217;ll arrange for a photographer and they&#8217;ll do some, they do mood boards and stuff like that of like, these are the shots we want.  </p>



<p>So they use a lot of those images in their posts. Um, but they&#8217;re probably, I think, using a tool like Canva. But I think still there&#8217;s a lot of validity here for crop Exactly. For the [00:11:00] theme this mm-hmm. , that perspective really illuminated for me was these themes have designs and ratios, you know, um, I&#8217;m trying&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Oh, sorry.  </p>



<p>The, I&#8217;m trying to, I I received a little bit of validation. I just, I, let me interrupt you for a sec. The, the other feedback that I&#8217;m getting or, or experiential feedback or whatever is the same thing in that, uh, essentially there is, it&#8217;s almost like a style guide or you mentioned a mood board, but where there will be somebody who makes decisions about the types of images or the way images are presented.  </p>



<p>So we, you had me add circles. Uh, I had a client suddenly request, uh, rounded squares [00:12:00] or round, really rounded corner squares. Um, see, that&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> cool because that&#8217;s a, that&#8217;s a differe. Nope, that&#8217;s interesting.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Sorry. And so, and no. Exactly, and that&#8217;s what I mean is like, you know what, we are a little bit at the mercy of what JavaScript can do and, uh, all that kind of stuff.  </p>



<p>But I, I love the idea of, um, Somebody, again, making decisions about, you know, what essentially what is allowed, what, how images are allowed to be presented on a website. Um, and so I think that&#8217;s, again, going back to like I, who manage sites for clients or somebody who develops themes. And, and so within a given theme, you know, the, the op the theme was designed for images to be 16, nine, but every author photo is meant to be a square with rounded [00:13:00] corners or whatever it is.  </p>



<p>Um, and so being able to lock in those, you know, we, we say here&#8217;s all the options and somebody goes in and configures all those options so that then when in your day-to-day, um, you&#8217;re, it&#8217;s a no. Editing images is, takes no brain space.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> But this the, you just. Um, I uncovered something that&#8217;s really interesting to me is like, I never thought about that.  </p>



<p>Rounded corners. Mm-hmm. , like think about you kinda get a line to images, but that&#8217;s a, that little thing apart from the technical, you know, how how to do it Sure. Is. Like that&#8217;s a cool way for something to stand out and I think could be like in that pro category, uh, the pay category of stuff is like, yep.  </p>



<p>The standout thing that we had kind of got into this higher conversation about us, like how to stand out. Uh, so that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s pretty cool. [00:14:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah, I think creative was, I think, I think we can, we can have some fun with it too. Um, potentially combined with other services or whatever. But like there&#8217;s, um, a little util we talk about, talked about utility apps.  </p>



<p>There&#8217;s a little utility app that I bookmarked and go back to from time to time, which is, uh, how I created my avatar that I use everywhere. You know, you upload an image, it, I think it&#8217;ll remove the, it must remove the background for you. Like there are a lot of little single page apps that&#8217;ll do that.  </p>



<p>But then it gives you, I don&#8217;t know, 40 different options of different backgrounds with sparkles or a star or circles. So it&#8217;s professional but fun. And then down below you can, they have backgrounds. So it&#8217;s you on a beach and you in front of the Eiffel Tower and yada yada. So, you know, we can. Relying on feedback and or when Corey&#8217;s a D H D kicks in [00:15:00] and wants to goof around.  </p>



<p>Or if I find some new, you know, piece of code that&#8217;ll let us do this stuff. Like, I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t want to go too crazy with this, you know, cuz it&#8217;s, we could get goofy and end up building features that nobody wants. Right. Um, but there&#8217;s definitely some opportunity for some of these little differentiators, um, to take images, uh, within WordPress to places they haven&#8217;t been before.  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> So, unless you have another pressing topic we should talk about, I&#8217;d like to explore that for a second. Not to say we should do it, but explore it. Sure. So that just kind of got me in a whole different, um, thought space of Okay. The round the corners thing is there and, and without technical understanding of this Sure.  </p>



<p>Could you have an image and have a pull quote in front of it? You know, or something like those ways of making an image, not just, I pulled [00:16:00] that from iStock photo or Unsplash or whatever, you know? Yep. Which is interesting because like your client came to you with the rounded corners. Yep. So it&#8217;s like, how could we dress up and make those images per our conversation?  </p>



<p>Like wait more. Interesting. Well, the avatar thing that&#8217;s really compelling, because maybe the tool is there&#8217;s a crop express area in the menu and you can go in and like, sure, it helps you do your featured image and eventually we&#8217;ll figure this crop where we crop it, you know? But like maybe there&#8217;s, um, that tool that, again, without technical, but I go, is that something we could do with JavaScript as a remove background or can we put some filters on mm-hmm.  </p>



<p>to, or can we lay things like a slide. That&#8217;s cool options right there. That&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> about, and, and, and what I thought you were gonna say is user images, author images, yes.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Make like in [00:17:00] with it, you get this kick butt, like, avatar,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> right. Because we&#8217;ve got, I mean, WordPress is tied to Avatar for better or worse. And there are lots of plugins for adding user images.  </p>



<p>If, you know, if in a traditional blog you have a little author byline and you wanna a little photo of them, if you don&#8217;t wanna use Gravita, there&#8217;s plugins that&#8217;ll intercept that request and, and use a WordPress image. Um, again, another place where, down the road, anywhere that somebody is interacting with images on WordPress, we wanna, you know, be there.  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Um, this is where Corey, I think we&#8217;re getting onto something. A bigger use case. Yep. But, um, you&#8217;ve been to Sticker Mule,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> but this is the background remover that I use generally.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Oh, is it? Okay. This is your utility? Yes, I have one. [00:18:00] It&#8217;s almost kinda like, oh, let&#8217;s take all these things and say, can we do them technically&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> upscale?  </p>



<p>Read your print. Yeah. So if you Google sticker Mule background remove, um, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s usually their background remover that I use cuz I, I love, I love Sticker Mule, I use them for swag. And so this is where, um, and, and there&#8217;s is free, like other people wanna limit the size or whatever, but these guys put it online so that with the idea that you would then go use whatever d background remover or image to print stickers.  </p>



<p>So yeah. Yeah, we can start getting into that. And the, the funny thing here is I&#8217;ve been curious if this, if we&#8217;d start to have this kind of conversation, um, because the, I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, like I was messing around with another product [00:19:00] in parallel, um, based on, uh, the, the service I built takes screenshots.  </p>



<p>And so it&#8217;s an API that takes screenshots, but using that a p i, it&#8217;ll, you know, people traditionally are like, oh, a screenshot of my homepage. And it&#8217;s like, okay, but you can, uh, manipulating H T M L with, and CSS is easy, relatively speaking. And then, and so you can kind of generate an image, uh, in a browser and then take a snap.  </p>



<p>Right. So one of the things that I started to build as a WordPress plugin is, um, for each post, if you go to a URL off of that post, you will see the featured image with the post title and post date. And then it takes a snapshot of that or a screenshot of that. And then that&#8217;s your social image. Yeah.  </p>



<p>Right. Oh&#8217;s and so, and so. It, it [00:20:00] does, I&#8217;m pretty sure it does require a third party, which is why I built this, had to build this separate a p i. Um, but you know, that&#8217;s something that I&#8217;ve already started looking at and there&#8217;s definitely ways that we could combine those things and it, and, you know, it should be a pro.  </p>



<p>Definitely we&#8217;re talking about getting into pro stuff, but, um, you know, there&#8217;s, yeah, it&#8217;s lots of other areas where tentacles could creep out involving images and WordPress.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> So I&#8217;m starting both these avatars and social images with the, in the screenshots that you talked about. Yeah. Because that&#8217;s so, you know, our premise a couple weeks ago was make ch creative chores fun or easier.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. , this is even like  </p>



<p>spruce up your stuff. Like when you talk about avatar, it&#8217;s like, wow, I went and there&#8217;s a thought behind the avatar. Cuz the final [00:21:00] thing is not just a quick image and somehow slammed in there. It&#8217;s like, no, they did a circle or run, whatever these tools we could do, it&#8217;s like treatment of images, you know?  </p>



<p>Right. So that&#8217;s a&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> level. Yeah. And, and again, I think, you know, the, to me the, I keep coming back to this. The real value add is, The Wizbang, um, not the actual creative part, but, but locking down the creative part. So, uh, you know, I ha again, I have a website, it&#8217;s a, um, or a client website. It&#8217;s a magazine. So every, uh, article that gets submitted has a user, cuz that&#8217;s the author.  </p>



<p>And so we&#8217;re up to a couple a dozen or, you know, and, and technically more. Um, but every, each one has to upload, we need to get an image from the author and then we upload it and it&#8217;s, they&#8217;re never quite [00:22:00] consistent and stuff like that. And so it&#8217;s, if we, we went in initially and decided, okay, avatar images are, even if it&#8217;s not connected necessarily to like the user profile or whatever.  </p>



<p>Cuz I keep ta I like your idea of a top level menu item that&#8217;s like, here&#8217;s. Even if it&#8217;s just bookmarks that link to deeper points within WordPress. But it&#8217;s like, here, here you can manage all of your author avatars and you know, initially when you set up the site, you&#8217;d say, okay, we want them all to be square and we want them all to have, you know, rounded corners.  </p>



<p>And you set that and you forget it. And so then every time a new author comes in, you know, you just say, upload image, crop it. And, and these decisions are made rather than, oh, we have a new author. I have to go back to Canva and move sliders around and try to remember, you know, what is our norm. Um, it&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> right there.[00:23:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Yeah. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s where you need it, where you&#8217;re doing the work. It&#8217;s not another platform. Yeah. Well like you&#8217;re saying, that concept is like left hand menu thing could be like that sticker mill tools. , here&#8217;s all your tools. Like, they&#8217;re not gonna need avatar every time, but they know, oh, I go back here. Go back to the utility.  </p>



<p>Yep. That spruces my images up,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> you know? Yeah. I like that idea of the, the menu because it&#8217;s, I, I kind of got stuck on when you were talking about it last week. I&#8217;m like, I like it from a branding perspective, you know, but what, and, and we could, and I, I don&#8217;t have a problem with having sort of an abstract utility app built in, but I, I was like, there&#8217;s something missing.  </p>



<p>And I think it&#8217;s that, like you, there&#8217;s a sub menu that says avatar, featured image, general image, or a crop to your heart&#8217;s content, you know? But,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> so here&#8217;s, here&#8217;s a question to that. [00:24:00] Um, there&#8217;s JavaScript tools and things that are available that do things. What are some of the things that, like in the libraries or out there, maybe that could connect some dots and go.  </p>



<p>Is this something that could be an easy lift and maybe the utility is more pro, but I&#8217;m really li I really like that. Like when we kind of make, become the indispensable utility for sping up your images or whatever fancy thing we&#8217;re gonna call it in there. But then I just go, there&#8217;s so much locked in jQuery, JavaScript, different libraries that are probably easy reasons.  </p>



<p>Like, is this remove a background feature? You know, I&#8217;m just giving. Mm-hmm. suggest like thoughts here. But if there&#8217;s some of that, it&#8217;s like, why not put that there anytime. I think the principal here could be, anytime we save them from having to go offsite site, that&#8217;s gotta be a plus one. Like that removed background thing.  </p>



<p>I know the iPhone does it, [00:25:00] stuff like that. But, um, the, some of these ticker meal tools, like you, you have that book marked to do that, you know? Mm-hmm. . That&#8217;s cool. Could we. Can we pull some of those things into that library? And then I guess the question is, what are some of those low hanging fruit fruits for that?  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yep, yep. I&#8217;m looking at, um, image manipulation plugins, WordPress image editor plugins, because I, you know, it&#8217;s, it, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s features, there&#8217;s benefits, there&#8217;s ways that they come together and we can, we can offer, we can keep adding features. Eventually we will suss out whether people are using them or not.  </p>



<p>Either we will build them because we get feedback or we will build them, and eventually we&#8217;ll start looking at analytics and determine that. Mm-hmm. , nobody is using the [00:26:00] watermarking tool or whatever we end. Attic, but I, Ooh. But I wanna&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> watermarking, . That&#8217;s another one I&#8217;m writing down, man. Seriously.  </p>



<p>Because you got all these photographers, different people, and they&#8217;re like, they wanna put their art up, but they want some sense of protection. That&#8217;s, that opens up another set of things like a whole other y uh, you know, an avatar group we can go toward, like, with just that watermark thing. Mm-hmm. . So I&#8217;m writing that down too,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> but I, what I wanna make sure the, the, the concentric circle that I wanna, or, or the middle that I wanna make sure we end up in it with.  </p>



<p>Um, this is like, I&#8217;m looking at plugins where you, it&#8217;s Canva or it&#8217;s whatever image editor you like, it&#8217;s Instagram. But it&#8217;s abstract. And, [00:27:00] and I see ways that these other plugins are not, maybe not integrated the way that we are talking about integrating. Cuz that to me is the real value. Like I&#8217;d rather have fewer, this is, this is me based on my experience, right?  </p>



<p>Obviously this will be determined by feedback, but I would rather have fewer features but be where it actually matters than I&#8217;m looking again at these other tools that are, I think the same, similar thing where like they&#8217;ve implemented libraries or they&#8217;ve, they&#8217;ve built a utility app and they&#8217;ve, you know, shoehorned it into WordPress, uh, like this, I don&#8217;t mean these to be derogatory phrases, um, but it&#8217;s, they are, they are potentially powerful photo editors, but they&#8217;re not where you need them to be.  </p>



<p>Right? Yeah. If you, if you have to click. Into media in order to get the editor in [00:28:00] order to upload an image to then go to a post, to me, you&#8217;ve missed an opportunity cuz it&#8217;s the, I want to click on featured image or I want to click on an image block and that&#8217;s where this, you know, whatever features need to be.  </p>



<p>Um, and, and that&#8217;s, and I think sussing out all those use cases to then go, okay, yes, they need watermarks or they need filters, or they need rounded corners or whatever. That&#8217;s when we start, you know, chasing all those feature lists basically. Yep.  </p>



<p>All I hear is that I need to get off my butt and hurry up. And not at all, get this stuff implemented, . Not at&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> all. But I, I continue to be excited as we do. Uh, really this whole product is just a dis a safari between Corey and Corey and I, I, I wrote down here. We&#8217;re building the case, you know, for it. [00:29:00] And, um, got our first feedback,  </p>



<p>there&#8217;s a point where we&#8217;re gonna have to say, okay, we think we&#8217;re onto something. And I guess the two ways I think about this one is just put it in a pro version and get somebody to buy. That&#8217;s validation. Second is, hey, does all this resonate? If, so here&#8217;s a, like a, it&#8217;s not a Kickstarter, but a Kickstarter thing of like, buy a hundred dollars, you know, we need 10 grand, let&#8217;s say, to chase these features that we&#8217;re gonna do that we&#8217;ve heard and come in, we&#8217;ll give you some special thing by being one of the first.  </p>



<p>Yep. So that&#8217;s another option, but I&#8217;m just throwing stuff out like. That&#8217;s a good idea because I feel like we&#8217;re starting to really build a case and we&#8217;re gonna need to make some actual decisions here pretty soon of going, we think this is it, but level of effort for [00:30:00] two hobby workers here doing this, it&#8217;s gonna require capital to go get, get the developer plus more time, you know, to, to chase some of these&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> mm-hmm.  </p>



<p>Yep. So, yeah, there&#8217;s definitely a, I There&#8217;ll&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> be a catalytic moment. I&#8217;m sorry, there&#8217;ll be a CATA for sure. Moment. You know, we keep coming back soon and&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> we&#8217;re soon there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s op we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re coming at it from opposite ends. Mm-hmm. . Um, we have, I think in the, in some of our discussions, we&#8217;ve established a baseline of functionality that&#8217;s on my plate and then we&#8217;re having really good high level conversations that are.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s, you know, you&#8217;re building a house, you know, you need a basement or a a, a cement slab. That&#8217;s Corey&#8217;s job right now. But it&#8217;s, and, and it&#8217;s not without its interesting challenges or [00:31:00] fun points of creativity, but you and I are, at the end of the day, each opening a beer proverbially and standing back and going, okay, so do we wanna build a widows walk?  </p>



<p>Do we want, uh, a hot tub? Do we want, um, you know, uh, a fireman&#8217;s pole? And s and right now is the time to have all those conversations. Cuz we&#8217;re like, oh, well, uh, I live in New Hampshire hot tub, you can only use about three months of the year. Not that people don&#8217;t have them, but you know, oh, we use&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> ours. , I use ours, I should say.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m like, okay, it&#8217;s five degrees, but ,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> it&#8217;s hot out there. .&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah. That maybe warrants some of this, cuz I think we&#8217;re building a case enough where I ki kind of go, okay man, it but it almost si to me and I wanna get your opinions on this. Here&#8217;s free. It&#8217;s got us enough to like really get to talking. Some [00:32:00] people are kind of using it and then going like some of these things.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m like, yeah. Then we just take down there. There&#8217;s a general thought or direction here. It&#8217;s like anything where you have to go offsite. Let&#8217;s think about that. Let&#8217;s think about watermark, social engine, screenshots, avatars, that&#8217;s all like paid features. Yeah, those are paid things.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah. But I like your idea of,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> that&#8217;s why, by the way, I&#8217;m glad you got that other domain, ,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> too many domains.  </p>



<p>I in I, that one I own actually brought me up to 20, which is way down. I used to have. You know, a hundred or something. But we need to&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> buy domain support group separate from this, cuz I&#8217;m with you. Um, but the, the domain you did get, I go, that&#8217;s probably where it seems like right now, today as we&#8217;ve talked about these options, that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re probably gonna land.  </p>



<p>Yeah. Um, [00:33:00] so, uh, sorry, so what are your thoughts on like, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;m feeling excited. I don&#8217;t wanna get it, but, you know, beyond our skis here, but I go man, one of these, you start with one domino, the second into a pro feature set. Um, we still don&#8217;t have a ton of users, which is what we need. Right. Well, I need&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> to finish thoughts on that again.  </p>



<p>I need to finish the slab. I need to finish the baseline version that is, Because the other thing I wanna be careful of, and, and we&#8217;re gonna have to, as usual 10, 10 thoughts, thought threads at once here. But I am glad that we are talking about these other directions because I want, what we can&#8217;t do is [00:34:00] have a plugin that is, um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> what are you looking at  </p>



<p>Uh, if you heard somebody yelling, that&#8217;s my dad, ,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> um, what we, what we can&#8217;t have is a free version that is useless. Yeah. Right. Okay. Is, or, or that, that hint set, you know, features but doesn&#8217;t actually deliver. And so I kind of have a feeling. , what we had originally talked about was like pro features that are specifically for, uh, agencies, stuff like that.  </p>



<p>But I have a feeling that even the non-technical or non-agency user is going to need like half of the pro features and great, we, it would be great if we could sell it to them, but if it, if it&#8217;s useless without those features, you know, we, [00:35:00] we see, we see too much churn. Yeah. And so if, if we can even make a pro version that&#8217;s cheap, that just adds a little bit of icing, but then we can use all of this as a segue into these other bigger solving, these other bigger problems than we start to build an empire.  </p>



<p>Um, which is very, uh, exciting. You know, if we. We start to get into, if there&#8217;s an uh, you know, WordPress and plugins and their add-ons, if there&#8217;s an avatar add-on, if there&#8217;s a social media image add-on mm-hmm. different from the core pro, which is only, you know, 10 bucks to add, you know, color pickers or something, you know, that, that feels better to me than trying to sell or trying to get people to use a free version that only works for us.  </p>



<p>Very small percentage. Yeah. And then [00:36:00] expect everybody to pay a hundred bucks. They&#8217;re just not gonna, yeah. Thank,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> thanks for anchor this. It needs to be a step, we need to work back on to the slab. So when you said that it came little kind of clear to me is like, maybe it&#8217;s just that area, you know, below the featured image.  </p>



<p>Uh, I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s where it should go in the ui, but it seems like that one thing could flesh out. And maybe there&#8217;s even, like, maybe that&#8217;s where custom dimensions comes into. Mm-hmm. Here it is, all your cropping. You don&#8217;t have to go somewhere else, you don&#8217;t have to upgrade, but like, it&#8217;s the free mvp.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s the, uh, not mvp. It&#8217;s the value prop is just want to get the right sized images, you know, done easily without having to find all these different workflows. It&#8217;s right here sitting for you as a utility right there [00:37:00] in right sidebar, post and page. What do you think?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah, I see that like it&#8217;s, uh, basically going in a, going in a different dimension.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s all of the features, but only in limited places as opposed to some of the features everywhere. All of the features everywhere. Yeah. So, yeah, we can, we can, we can look at that kind of configuration. I think it, to me, that&#8217;s. , the way I often design product is by building, as we&#8217;ve talked about. And so I think that that&#8217;s the sort of thing that&#8217;s going to become self pretty self apparent as I&#8217;m building.  </p>



<p>And then you and I can either have one of these calls or can talk in Slack as I&#8217;m going. Okay, so we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve covered our bases. We have that cement slab. What is, what does this first floor look like? Do I build three stories of one room or do I build one story of three rooms? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And so we can [00:38:00] decide whether we want to kind of go up or go out.  </p>



<p>Um, so, you know, so what feels good and what, how much feedback we have&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> at the time. Absolutely. And what clarity I see now up for your feedback is we have some case for. A bigger utility that goes, dives deeper into like the avatar. So there&#8217;s the screenshot thing. You blew my mind for a second. But you go into social images, you go into water marketing.  </p>



<p>So we&#8217;ve got a case building here for pro and then you anchored us back to free full. A full featured free, I think is what I take from this. And that makes me think that free tool needs to be inside bar and it needs to have custom dimensions. Mm-hmm. . Because then why would you want to go anywhere else?  </p>



<p>Like, cuz somebody could conceivably say, well it&#8217;s letting me crop and get the crop, you know, images, but I want them to a little different. Then they&#8217;re still having to go out. But if we just think only featured free, I [00:39:00] go, that&#8217;s it To me. I go put it in the sidebar. Custom dimensions we&#8217;re good, but again, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m positing this, I just  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> custom dimensions. I think that&#8217;s where. Okay. Because I think it&#8217;s necessary. I think that that&#8217;s the, you know, you we&#8217;re, without it, we&#8217;re talking about, I don&#8217;t know, a car without gas or something. Mm-hmm. . It just doesn&#8217;t, it just doesn&#8217;t do enough. We can&#8217;t, I can&#8217;t imagine that the vast majority of websites only use Square or 16.9 and subsequently we&#8217;re gonna cover our bases.  </p>



<p>I think it&#8217;s, um, cuz we also, I think, want to hint at that additional value prop of agencies of locking down your website, even from yourself. So the settings page. [00:40:00] Yeah. If you want to allow certain sizes or aspect ratios that are not 16, nine or square, you have to click, click, click to go over to the settings page.  </p>



<p>Now you set it once and you forget it. But it&#8217;s over there. Whereas day to day you&#8217;re going in and you&#8217;re going, well, my website is actually 16 1.6 that&#8217;s already configured, and then day-to-day, I&#8217;m just plugging in in images.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> So it seems like, like I&#8217;m trying to remember back to like the Photoshop CRO tool.  </p>



<p>You get the little window over here that&#8217;s, you can type in pixels wide, pixels tall. Then you have an aspect ratio that could be tweaked potentially. Yeah. Like to me, man, if that&#8217;s like maybe the, there&#8217;s the preset, click it go. Just try to get &#8217;em fast. The crop. Then there&#8217;s, in that window, when it pulls up, there&#8217;s, maybe it&#8217;s an advanced tab or something, but it&#8217;s [00:41:00] conceptual.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;m just kind of talking, but it&#8217;s like those little, that little Photoshop box. If you want to go custom, here you go. And then you can click crop and it&#8217;s done. Yep. Okay. If that&#8217;s it. What, what do you think the level ever for that is? Because I don&#8217;t wanna say Corey, could you do that for us? But I just wanna say, what do you think?  </p>



<p>That level of effort, because man, right, with that is, okay, beachhead product is crop the pro then become, this is a path into pro. You do this, by the way, so here&#8217;s the panacea for those of you that needs this over here, it&#8217;s called mm-hmm. , our domain. Um, so what&#8217;s level, level of&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> effort you think for that?  </p>



<p>Uh, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s honestly, I ha it&#8217;s built already. I had to rip it out, um, to submit the free version because we had talked about, I love working with developers, , um, you know, keeping it very simple. Yeah. Just getting a proof of concept out the door. So, uh, [00:42:00] you know, cuz that, that&#8217;s, to me, even thinking about the 0 0 1 version, we, I knew we would need custom.  </p>



<p>Configuration. So, um, so putting in a simple settings page and allowing, uh, some basic, you know, one or two presets essentially gets us there. Um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> okay. So, so if I capture this right though, so they would activate plugin and set those in the plugin settings tab and then have &#8217;em available when that rat sidebar thing comes up, or did I get that wrong?  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> No, that, I mean, that was how I imagined it initially. Okay. Uh, but I, as we&#8217;ve talked about, or I talked about I two or three sessions ago, I also think that we need an option to bypass. Um, like we don&#8217;t want to truly [00:43:00] 100% Absolutely. Lock somebody out of uploading an image that&#8217;s some goofy size and shape, like that&#8217;s just root.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s your, it&#8217;s their website. So, in. So in my mind, the flow that we&#8217;ve proposed is setting up a new site or you have a site, you install the plugin, you&#8217;d go and say, this site uses or will use 16 1.6 aspect ratio images save. And then when I, whenever I try to upload a featured image, it&#8217;ll, it&#8217;s an option.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;ll default to that. But there will also, which right now we&#8217;re lacking. But there is so an advanced button that says, do whatever the hell you want. Or just, yeah, blunt. Upload a 10,000 pixel image. Even though we don&#8217;t recommend that you do that. So the&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> reason why I&#8217;m asking some of these in depth, cuz if I get the workflow in my head and I know how it goes, I, that&#8217;s where I&#8217;d like to, here&#8217;s your workflow, here it is, you know, [00:44:00] and we&#8217;re gonna do our best in the product side to make it really easy and safe.  </p>



<p>But that&#8217;s really helpful cuz I&#8217;d go. Hey, it&#8217;s here in the settings page, but you can also, when you&#8217;re popping it up, crop it to what you think. Right? But if they&#8217;re like me, I go, I don&#8217;t know how far this is. I don&#8217;t, you know, I don&#8217;t know how wide single post templates are typically, I guess like 400, 500.  </p>



<p>But, so that&#8217;s really, really awesome cuz there&#8217;s like, if you&#8217;re the agency, you&#8217;re gonna set it in the plugin. It&#8217;s there for &#8217;em. If you&#8217;re the independent professional using it, trying to publish content, you might use this at some point, but you got this flexibility. That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> brilliant. And I think, uh, we will do two things.  </p>



<p>We will have, and this is similar to a lot of other plugins that have this pattern, and I think it&#8217;s, I think it&#8217;s a winner, is you have a settings page. So [00:45:00] you&#8217;ve gone non-developers, but you also allow those settings to be. Hmm. Locked in by defining constants in your WP config file. So it&#8217;s the kind of thing where, uh, you know, um, WP Migrate DB Pro, um, or a c F or there&#8217;s a bunch of other plugins that do this, where you&#8217;ve, uh, you can go in and fiddle with things, or Corey the developer, sets up a new site, drops in a couple of the same constants on all of the sites, and so there&#8217;s no messing with a settings page.  </p>



<p>Things are just defined. Um, and so we can do a, uh, we can normalize it that way too. So&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I&#8217;m gonna follow up with Kathy&#8217;s aunt over at Cadence to talk this through, but there, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve hit it because the free tool will say, [00:46:00] this is what I heard. I&#8217;m a web development design firm, agency developer, whatever else.  </p>



<p>Um, I create, go to all this pain to create this great site for someone and then they end up probably bettering because the images is a wild, wild west in their workflow is like, we&#8217;re gonna use cadence or whatever theme framework, Hey, go here. This is gonna protect your beautiful project you just delivered to the client.  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s killer man. Yeah. And just making it like it&#8217;s a free tool, you know? And by the way, at some point there&#8217;s gonna be this other thing. So like we get &#8217;em here, use this on all your client sites. So that&#8217;s the u free utility version. Help people. That&#8217;s our, I think that&#8217;s our angle into building the user base for this is, Hey everybody, raise your hand if you had a client.  </p>



<p>Who takes your beautiful project and screws it up with images. [00:47:00] Yep. Okay. This crop express helps put some little guardrails, like bowling, put the guardrails out so it doesn&#8217;t bounce into the gutter. Yep. I think we&#8217;ve just like stumbled into really compelling to this process. Um, way to go, like we&#8217;re being opinionated, you know, you telling me like themes said, I was like going back to my theme days going, yeah, you&#8217;re right.  </p>



<p>They designed us with specific things to make sure it lights up like the demo site does, but then in the tool, in the software itself, , it&#8217;s all over the place. It breaks, it makes it&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> look ugly and, and here&#8217;s a little like silly little thing, but low lift may be valuable is I&#8217;m picturing content journey who are writers.  </p>



<p>And content people, but who are, maybe some of them at [00:48:00] least are not going to be artistic or not going to be comfortable in Photoshop or what have you. Right. So they will, they might be sourcing images. I&#8217;m trying to, I&#8217;m thinking on my feet here, so obviously I&#8217;m stumbling a little, but like my clients too, they go and they source images and I have taught them that we use, we need an image that within that image, whatever size shape it is, there needs to be a 16 nine and there needs to be a square cuz the one of the sites specifically uses that.  </p>



<p>Right. But they&#8217;ve had to learn that and I&#8217;ve had to teach that to them. And so imagine this, again, silly little thing, but I, I kind of am in love with this idea at the moment. I love where you&#8217;re going. Is uh, it, once you hit settings or once you set those things, it auto generates a style [00:49:00] guide, documentation or what have you.  </p>



<p>You know, and, and I think this can keep going, but like, again, the quick and easy is I install Crop Express. I set it, I, the developer set it so that the, the website allows this and, you know, 16, nine and square both need to be 10,000 or, or 2000 or less, which is the plug-in will or take advantage of, but it generates some sort of documentation or reference material that I can then hand the client and say, you know, not so, so it doesn&#8217;t rely on them to have to learn or have to figure this stuff out.  </p>



<p>They have. A thing upfront that says, okay, here&#8217;s what you need when you go to Unsplash affiliate link. When you go to Stock Unlimited affiliate link, you know, these are the, this is what you need to be looking for, this is how you download it, et cetera, et cetera. [00:50:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I love it because you&#8217;re teaching in the software, you&#8217;re guiding in not just programmatically, but like, that&#8217;s content heaven right there, because conceptually settings page when they&#8217;re doing, or there&#8217;s a, some kind of quick, you know, setup and it&#8217;s like, that&#8217;s our lead magnet two.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like, hey, here&#8217;s the five best places. Uh, here&#8217;s some th like the thoughts we&#8217;ve done on how to like source an image. We, you and I could probably rough some of that out and like, you want it, you know, and journalism is like, you don&#8217;t want the person looking off the page. , you know, so like there&#8217;s some tips we could put in there and that could become guidance and lead magnet&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> and like, yep.  </p>



<p>And we let, let developers white label it so they put their own logo. And so Corey gets paid to set up a website. I set up a website, install a theme, install crop express, plug in [00:51:00] the hardcode, what I know will, will work and, and match a best practice. Click a button that then downloads the documentation that I need, that I can then hand the client so that, you know, it makes my life easier.  </p>



<p>I don&#8217;t have to teach them anything. Ooh. And, and maybe that is powerful. Maybe, maybe I, it lets me put my logo in there instead of crop express. So I&#8217;m now handing Corey branded material to the client who I just built a website for.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I just think I need to go, I put another name on my list, which is I need to talk to Kimberly at ballet.  </p>



<p>Because all these companies that do agencies that do maintenance and stuff, you&#8217;re like, Hey, make this better. You know? Like, this will make it better. They&#8217;re, they&#8217;ll actually size images correctly. You can do the things you&#8217;re talking about cuz you&#8217;re thinking about the white label, which normally in the past I put into pro.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like, well, that&#8217;s when you get into pro. But I love it here because it&#8217;s like [00:52:00] when you go to a developer, you can just do this and it&#8217;s gonna be better. And they go, heck yeah, because I don&#8217;t have to do all the work and the, I&#8217;m gonna get the benefit from that for my client. Now we&#8217;re, now we&#8217;re here, now we&#8217;re hitting huge case study for free and Pro.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. . Yep. That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s brilliant man. So, okay, so the, what I got is right sidebar custom dimensions. And maybe a third for downstream is like, do we do this white labeling thing? But I&#8217;ll put the third, uh, that&#8217;ll be fourth. I&#8217;ll put the third is, and this will be on me. Uh, I&#8217;ll need some help from you.  </p>



<p>But it is like collecting these, here&#8217;s your five sources. Mm-hmm. , you know, here&#8217;s, you can find and source good, good stuff. And I could turn into, lead back to our blog on the site [00:53:00] that at some point goes, we&#8217;re gonna talk about open ai, this source. Like, hey, that&#8217;s a webinar you and I can do. Just playing around with stuff.  </p>



<p>I&#8217;ve been talking to Ag Mors about this, like, maybe we spend a webinar, we&#8217;re like talking about how to cool, create cool images for your blog post using Dolly, or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. great content. Get the people attracted that we need. Tell &#8217;em we&#8217;re trying to make their life better. Like, that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s the game right there.  </p>



<p>Like, yeah. Okay, let me, let me record this right side dimensions, some of the EDU guidance content that&#8217;s me. And then downstream, I think is what label, unless  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> I mean just, you know, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s complicated ways to do it and easy ways to do it. And so we can start with the easy way of no branding or what have you. And here&#8217;s content. Yeah. [00:54:00] Um, I worked with valet a few years ago and one of the things that they were working hard on was the conceptual.  </p>



<p>Literature and illustration of the value they provided every month. Um, and came up with, I have t-shirts that have the design on them, but, um, the illustrated, you know, here&#8217;s what we do for you every month, because that is something that agencies who who run retainers have to, you wanna stay top of mind.  </p>



<p>You don&#8217;t want just invoices to roll in without a client going, wait, what did, what did you do in the last 30 days? Or what did you do in the last year? Um, Chris Lema had a great blog post about this years ago, um, that I took away from, uh, for my conbon plugin was send, you know, between purchasing and renewal, I [00:55:00] automated 12 emails.  </p>



<p>That of generic content, valuable, but generic content, evergreen, I should say, content. So at month eight it would say, okay, you are eight months into using your CONBON plugin. By now you are an expert. Here are some advanced tips, or whatever it was. Um, and so, you know, if we can give agencies content to hand to their clients, it&#8217;s obviously not necessarily month over month, but that kind of content.  </p>



<p>You know, I&#8217;m teaching you, I&#8217;m helping you use your website to its fullest, all that kind of stuff. I, you know, again, I, I think it, it will resonate with some people. Yep.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Uh, championing the cause, helping people, guiding them, walking with them. It&#8217;s good stuff.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> But all that to say, I think, yeah, Kim at Valet would is a great person.  </p>



<p>I know that they were working on that. I mean, it was years ago now, but, [00:56:00] um, you know, see where she&#8217;s at and, and see that it resonates with her or doesn&#8217;t, but. Okay.  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I think Kathy, uh, I&#8217;ll try to ping Kathy this week. If I can get to it today. I&#8217;ll ping her to get the conversation. I&#8217;ve got other things to talk about or talk with her anyway and talk about this cuz if we can like get on a tr get on somebody&#8217;s that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a Cadillac moment potentially. Plus being able to, sorry, go ahead.  </p>



<p>Just being able to say this is how the theme will look best and this tool&#8217;s gonna help you with that. Huge. Yeah. And&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> I, I would love to make sure that that&#8217;s true. Because as I&#8217;ve discussed a little bit, I, I primarily use a page builder, which lets anybody upload anything anywhere on the page. Different from what [00:57:00] I conventionally thought of with themes, which was I buy a realtor theme that is already preconfigured for a realtor.  </p>



<p>So when I click install theme it autoinject fake content with fake realtor pages and fake listings and all that, you know. Does that where between the block editor and the block editor being used for full site editing and page builders and these big theme frameworks or, you know, uh, just shy of a page builder type theme.  </p>



<p>I want to make sure that that&#8217;s the use case we&#8217;re talking about is still true. Mm-hmm. . In which case, it&#8217;s not like I, you know, we could make a module for Elementor or Beaver Builder, and then it&#8217;s on the [00:58:00] shoulders of the person setting up the website to install those modules and then set those, you know, we want, we wanna allow 16, nine images or whatever it is, which I think is a different use case than my neighbor who&#8217;s a realtor.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. , who installs a plugin and it&#8217;s the, or ex installs a theme. And the theme is preconfigured with our, to work with our plugin to, to say, you know, I have already built all these layouts that are, that encourage that, that only really work best with 16 not, does that make sense? Like, oh yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s so.  </p>



<p>So thinking ahead&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> to them, talk your, your theme people and make sure that this assumption is correct.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah, we&#8217;ll just get on the, see where that alignment is. But my hunch is like, I think it&#8217;s Ben over at Cadence, but as they&#8217;re, whoever designs [00:59:00] their themes, actually, I think it&#8217;s Sailor now, but whoever design their themes, like if you could wish that they would fill it with images that really glorify your theme, what would that be?  </p>



<p>That&#8217;s the question, right? You know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> and or, and or we&#8217;re talking about, you know, if, if you are, because if a theme gives total freedom like a page builder, where, where does it make sense to lock down images? Because Corey comes into a blank slate. It&#8217;s up to me to decide. Okay. You know, or, or I had a client who, um, it&#8217;s a, um, Asian American themed website.  </p>



<p>And so they originally wanted images that were, um, slightly vertical based on the Japanese mats that people sleep on. Apparently, they are a standard aspect ratio, and so [01:00:00] I don&#8217;t think anybody has ever looked at the website and, and got the reference. But, you know, they wanted, so it&#8217;s, again, it is like, you know, four instead of a four, three aspect ratio, it&#8217;s four, 3.7, but that would&#8217;ve been decided by the designer and or me, not the theme creator.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. . So anyway, I&#8217;m just, I&#8217;m, and I, I have no idea what the theme landscape looks like these days.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> It&#8217;s something I can, I can add some of our agency owners too. It&#8217;s like, What, what tools are they doing to build websites and things like that? I still take it, especially on the boutique level, they&#8217;re using some framework like a Cadence Generat press, an AOR or Beaver builder to, to build that.  </p>



<p>So if we can, I love this cuz it&#8217;s just, we&#8217;re just talking about the workflow, which you&#8217;ve done right? You specifically have done so you know that and that&#8217;s, [01:01:00] yeah, that&#8217;s good stuff. Okay, so plan is get, get to the full feature set for free  </p>



<p>and I&#8217;ll talk to these people and then we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;re building this really cool case for being that utility. Oh, everything&#8217;s here. Then we can start talking about where that, like tools here, but there&#8217;s, does it need to be integrated here? Like when you say social images, does it need to be somewhere, again, not technically speaking here, but conceptually is like, Yost has social images that needs to tie into here.  </p>



<p>Um, man, we&#8217;re, I think we&#8217;re onto something. I really do. And it&#8217;s not just blind optimism and because we&#8217;re having fun doing this. I think we&#8217;re getting, we&#8217;re really building this case.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Well, and I, the other thing, I think the good plan that has evolved, yes. And, and I think we are building, [01:02:00] people talk about authority and this is how you build authority.  </p>



<p>Like you, you get an idea for a product or a problem you want to solve, and then you start splashing around at it, you know? Yeah. I hadn&#8217;t thought about image cropping really, because I am comfortable in Photoshop and Yep. And then I, after a while I got lazy and so started using, you know, a different program or found a website that did it and it was good enough, but I was never.  </p>



<p>Thinking deeply about cropping images other than I needed to, I need, I need this done, this task done, and now it&#8217;s done. And then I quick upload it and off we go. Whereas now we are, we are becoming the experts, uh, on cropping images, manipulating images, WordPresses relationship with images, themes, images, plugins, da da da da da da da.  </p>



<p>Um, and that&#8217;s where, down the road, [01:03:00] you know, I, I, I have, I have a lot of fun with this, this part of the process. And down the road we become, you know, the image expert guys, the crop expert guys. The, it&#8217;s all of our marketing content. Go ahead.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Oh, no, no, no, no. You&#8217;re, yeah, I was, yes, you&#8217;re on the thing. Uh, the next thing I was gonna say, you&#8217;re leading straight into it.  </p>



<p>Do, um, do you mind if we talk publicly about the domain? No, of course not. Okay. So, You&#8217;re leading into this . I was trying to be like not, not as excited. So I could&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> finish, wait, hold this statement. Should we It is, it is th uh, 1 0 5. Should we save the discussion till next week?  </p>



<p>Yes, you can say no .&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Okay. I wanna say no because I think it&#8217;s just real quick. It&#8217;s just a thought that we&#8217;ll come back to. Mm-hmm. for sure. For direction. We built this case and everything, so I go, crop Express is the free [01:04:00] plugin, but the domain is the brand. Mm. So like if you think about business and marketing wise, we got this one thing, but we&#8217;re making this case for, and how would you say the domain It&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> unfortunately, so it&#8217;s image img.express.  </p>



<p>Okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> So to me, it seems like we just got this clear path, like we&#8217;re building this case and I go, it needs to be crop express by. I m g Express because we just placed this discovered, backed into, here&#8217;s the free utility. There&#8217;s a bigger case here, but it&#8217;s by this brand Corey and Corey, the I m G Express guys.  </p>



<p>Yep. You know, so I kind of tend to think like when we&#8217;re ready doesn&#8217;t have to happen. Now is like, because all roads we want to lead to, we did this just to get your attention to a beachhead and then, but we&#8217;re the [01:05:00] IMG guys, right? From a branding business&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> perspective, we are, we are all things image.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yep.  </p>



<p>Because we&#8217;ve got these use guys. We know we&#8217;ve got some, some, some, we got something here. Um, that is a, could be packaged together and sold for a good price that could sustain and support this business. So that, that&#8217;s the only thing I wanted to say. We don&#8217;t have to finalize that, but I just go man, that that&#8217;s clarity.  </p>



<p>Of like, it&#8217;s the Im g guys, and by the way, we&#8217;re known like, this is a great utility. Everybody should use it. We do it free because you, you need it, people need it. This is gonna make the web better. When you get to the advanced stuff and you really want to go next level, look what we&#8217;re doing here. And that&#8217;s where you come into the community as Im g community, as professionals doing this work.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah. I mean, the obvious, uh, parallel that comes to mind is like sayed at doing WP [01:06:00] Beginner. Mm-hmm. Where WP G beginner, uh, I don&#8217;t, I, it runs ads. I suppose I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s some way that it makes money, but for the most part it&#8217;s just a phenomenal resource.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Yeah. It&#8217;s hub free content. It&#8217;s the Osmo Automotive Hub for everything they.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Right. And obviously they, they use it to promote their products and stuff like that, but I end up on their website all the time learning things. I scroll to the bottom where they usually have a code, version, um, to solve whatever little problem I&#8217;m trying to, to solve. But, um, you know, to me we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re kind of following that same path.  </p>



<p>If we get people using Crop Express often and and using that for, um, as a reference for other things, then yeah, you know, we can, we can kind of go in any direction really. So, I&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> already put another domain thought about this and I didn&#8217;t wanna do it [01:07:00] publicly just yet cuz we don&#8217;t have the domain secured for it, but I was like, and, and I&#8217;ll totally buy that one.  </p>



<p>But, um, I was like, you think about IMG and stuff. But yes. Sorry, back to I got, I got squirreled, sorry. But back to this. You&#8217;re fine. , we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re building the case. We&#8217;re creating this resource. You and I are passionate about this kind of stuff. We&#8217;ve got extensive experience, even if we weren&#8217;t the person, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve done these things and it feels very natural to be like, that&#8217;s the brand.  </p>



<p>This is our, and I wouldn&#8217;t have had that clarity two months ago, by the way.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Right, right. It&#8217;s, yeah. You know, we are waiting deeper and deeper into the pr and it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s also where you start to, you know, the edges become less amorphous. Mm-hmm. You know, the , uh, uh, but you also start to see the rise in . Yeah.  </p>



<p>But it&#8217;s, you know, you, [01:08:00] you&#8217;re stepping foot in, into, you know, all new territory. And I mean, we&#8217;re gonna keep having these conversations, uh, and especially. Upfront because we&#8217;re not getting a lot of feedback. We are doing our own exploration, which also involves like, you know, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s lots of writing and whatnot about we are, we are having biased conversations, right?  </p>



<p>We are going, you are, you are going to content journey with a solution looking for a problem if we&#8217;re honest mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Um, we&#8217;re not, we are open to them saying what we really need is X, Y, Z. But you know, that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re at. Because right now all we can do is make assumptions.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I did try just so you know, to not do problem first and ask somebody, oh sure.  </p>



<p>How do you do it? And that was a gold mine, just like this guy mentioned. He&#8217;s like, okay. That&#8217;s validating of, we&#8217;re not trying to just say, I&#8217;ve got a hammer. Where&#8217;s your nail? Um, [01:09:00] that&#8217;s good stuff, man. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s been fun walking with you and this is a good, like, I think we needed each other to kind of, Get to this part.  </p>



<p>And it just feels better than, honestly, better than any product I&#8217;ve done because we&#8217;re, we had less pressure. We thought it served our need and we started exploring how it is, and it, it just feels like we&#8217;re on the right path. Yeah, for sure. This could be something, man.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> And it&#8217;s, and I, I&#8217;m really selfishly, I&#8217;m excited to see where we end up in a year, maybe nowhere, who knows, but to then come back and visit these conversations cuz these are always the, you know, what is it, you know, you did.  </p>



<p>You make a, you make a plan, and then halfway through executing the plan, you&#8217;re like, why did we decide&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> to do this? See, I thought that was the only one. Like, yeah, nobody comes over. [01:10:00] Most people, I should say, don&#8217;t have the fully crystallized, baked out plan. So much of product is expiration like this, right?  </p>



<p>I think the people, honestly, I&#8217;m side baring and squiring on this, but like the people that kind of think they got the perfect thing, I go one, you might be a genius. Cool. Congratulations. Number two, you&#8217;re probably pretty rare the rest of us trying&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> to figure it out. Yep, yep. And I mean, and time March is on, like I was, somebody asked on Twitter, uh, I don&#8217;t remember what happened to your first product or something.  </p>



<p>Um, and, and I was like, I, I got up to, through, through the discussion, I was like, I got up to thousands of users but could never figure out how to monetize and. And the person I was talking with was like, I, that, that&#8217;s how, how, how is that possible? Mm-hmm. . And it&#8217;s like, well it was email-based. It was a product, so [01:11:00] you couldn&#8217;t really run ads, which was his good suggestion.  </p>



<p>Um, it was a product for people who had no money, , so you don&#8217;t wanna sell to people who have no money. Um, you know, and, and the technology of sending lots of emails was expensive and all this stuff. So it was like, there were all these things at the time, whereas, I could build it better now for much cheaper and could probably figure out how to monetize based on new patterns that have emerged and stuff like that.  </p>



<p>So there&#8217;s, you know, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s all of those dimensions. Like even if you&#8217;re a genius, um, you know, and come up with the perfect product, the perfect time, like, you&#8217;ve still gotta keep those, the, you know, there&#8217;s wear and tear. If you build the perfect car and you&#8217;re rolling down the road, good for you.  </p>



<p>But there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s wear and tear. There&#8217;s also gonna be other people that go, oh, I can build a car like that and start racing you. I mean, all these things that compound [01:12:00] over time. Mm-hmm. . It took me a long time to understand the time aspect of a lot of what we do both in business and even in like programming and stuff like that of um, you know, and to get technical for a minute.  </p>



<p>Like there&#8217;s, uh, you know, when you click on something that triggers an event within a website, but technically there&#8217;s a number of events, you know, mouse down versus mouse click versus, you know, da da da da da. And all of these things happen in an order, and most, a lot of it&#8217;s, um, fixed now. But there was a time when different browsers would put mouse down before mouse click, you know, or the other way around.  </p>



<p>It&#8217;s like just this other level of thinking that I was able to abstract and now look at also in the context of building product and building business and whatnot of you&#8217;ve. You&#8217;ve got the people involved, you&#8217;ve got the ideas, you&#8217;ve got all this stuff. But tomorrow the landscape might be different. If somebody else comes [01:13:00] out with a plugin that does or doesn&#8217;t do, or proves or doesn&#8217;t prove everything we&#8217;re talking about, we, we have to adjust all of our thinking, you know?  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. , which was honestly half the fun,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> but I like your positive spin on that. . I like it. It&#8217;s cause you know, we&#8217;re doing this in public and you&#8217;re like, yeah, somebody go, okay, cool. Thank you for getting me that way. I&#8217;m gonna go do this. You know? Um, and that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s part of playing this game. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> I mean, and we, as we&#8217;ve talked about, we have the luxury of, we, we are not desperate.  </p>



<p>We do not need this to succeed tomorrow. Um, and I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve definitely, I have been in that seat. I put myself in that seat years ago, um, counted on like, oh, the, my next product has to succeed, or I can&#8217;t pay rent, and I [01:14:00] made no good decisions. Mm-hmm. . And so for me, that&#8217;s, I, I know people who work better under pressure.  </p>



<p>I do not. And so for me, that&#8217;s, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve worked long and hard to get to a position of luxury entitlement, privilege, uh, knowledge and experience where I can build product or play this game, like you said, under the circumstances that are best for me. Mm-hmm. . And I think that that&#8217;s, that only comes with time and experience.  </p>



<p>Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> It&#8217;s good timing for both of us because I&#8217;ve painfully, you know, trodden this path for a long time. You know, like, I don&#8217;t know if I told you the story back buddy, but we can do that next week. But you know, so much of this, it felt like high stakes poker in a sense of, in the past for me, because we were a product company and trying to dial this stuff in, [01:15:00] felt so much like art and not science.  </p>



<p>Um, I still think it&#8217;s a blend of those two, art and science where Oh, sure. Like if I hadn&#8217;t had you and we&#8217;re doing this, talking this through, I would&#8217;ve went into a different direction that probably wouldn&#8217;t have been right. But because I had you, cuz like for instance, you grounded me back to let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s concentrate on the, the foundation.  </p>



<p>I was like, ding, ding, thank you for the grounding. Mm-hmm. . And like, then we real quickly got what that should be. You&#8217;ve surprised me and already been doing some of that work and it&#8217;s like that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s where we need to be right&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> now. And I&#8217;ve been desperate to work with somebody for years. You know, I&#8217;ve pretty much always been the solopreneur, solo founder, solo builder.  </p>



<p>Yeah. And have often had wonderful people around me willing to ha you know, be in to mastermind with me. Um, you [01:16:00] know, but to have somebody who at least right now is 50 50, um, is, is a whole different experience and, you know, and exceedingly valuable. I definitely, yeah. I feel like we&#8217;ve arrived at a lot of things faster than either one of us would have.  </p>



<p>Had we had I just been over here banging away at Yeah. The plugin that you asked me for and I was thinking about, but was like, well, you know, is this, is this, I&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> think too, sorry, I didn&#8217;t mean to cut you off. No, go, go, go. I, I think too, I want to give you a real gratitude in this is like, because of your experiences, Uh, a lot of developers I&#8217;ve worked with, um, there&#8217;s high idealism and I really love that.  </p>



<p>I value that. And then, but you&#8217;ve had enough experiences that go, we can&#8217;t do everything. You know, you know enough about the business and marketing side [01:17:00] that, and how things get done, where I&#8217;m not having to be like, I&#8217;ve had those conversations before and this feels really fluid and I compliment you for that.  </p>



<p>And thank you for being a partner because, you know, oftentimes the way I&#8217;ve experienced is like negative. That&#8217;s why I gave all this caveats when I was like, Hey, I&#8217;m not talking about technical. I don&#8217;t know what the technical, cuz I feel like it&#8217;s been past conversations. Mm-hmm. and I&#8217;m like, I&#8217;m talking conceptually.  </p>



<p>But you get that, you know. Yeah. You&#8217;re like, yeah, we we&#8217;re not in these 30 seconds deciding to do a two month long feature, . We&#8217;re exploring it, trying to make a good decision that&#8217;s best for us. The product, the user. So thank you for that. And that, that&#8217;s experience, Corey, I mean, seriously, as,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> as a dev, it, it is because I was the grumpy programmer in the corner for, there&#8217;s so many, at least a decade, you know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> and there&#8217;s so many too.  </p>



<p>Like I, that experience and I get it [01:18:00] because you all are brilliant and you can do these things like write code, do this stuff. Like, I&#8217;m like, that&#8217;s another thing I haven&#8217;t accessed. And so, yeah. Sorry I cut you off again, but No, it&#8217;s fine. Saying fine, but I just, I&#8217;m thankful for those experiences, . Yeah. I,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> I don&#8217;t know why so many developers are assholes to be blunt about it.  </p>



<p>Like there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a, a feeling of power. Great. Uh, uh, where that comes from. I don&#8217;t know. I mean, and I, I know where mine came from, uh, but it&#8217;s unique to my upbringing and situation and mentality and all that stuff. And, you know, so it, I, I can&#8217;t imagine that everybody had the same, uh, experiences I did that arrived at this.  </p>



<p>Like, I am genius. You all should bow before me just because I learned to code. Um, but thankfully what, what is interesting to me is, uh, therapy and yeah, uh, getting into [01:19:00] product forced me to learn empathy. I had to, you know, I, I read all the, I showed it last week. I have all the books on graphic design and user interface and don&#8217;t make me think and, uh, all those types of, of books and, um, you know, and so I could design a good product.  </p>



<p>But then the, the product I alluded to a minute ago, from 15 years ago, I had, um, people who, uh, I had grandmothers and very non-technical people, and I had, um, people in, uh, countries where there&#8217;s not much economic, um, structure and whatnot. And, uh, using my pro, that&#8217;s why they were using my product. So basically, instead of mint.com that relied on plugging in all of your banking info.  </p>



<p>I had people in Nepal who were like, we don&#8217;t have bank [01:20:00] accounts, but I would still like to track my spending. Um, so it was kind of a neat little, you know, but I was like, oh, well just, you know, saying to the grandma or saying to somebody who, you know, totally different, um, cultural context. Like, oh, just click on this and click on this.  </p>



<p>And they&#8217;re like, you know, or, or people who only have phones. And so I&#8217;m like, well go to the desktop view. And they&#8217;re like, what? What desktop view or whatever it is, you know? And so I had to learn. Empathy and that I wasn&#8217;t always right. ,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> I think he just hit it. There&#8217;s this level of genius and creativity that so many developers like you have talked to.  </p>



<p>And I&#8217;m like, I value it. We in the world value it. And then there&#8217;s this other side, and I think so many of the developers I know had to go through some crucible to get to like, okay, I need this other side. A genius needs help. You know, like you need a supporting cast. Um, but, and I&#8217;ve seen [01:21:00] enough developers go, you gotta go through this event where you get burned.  </p>



<p>Hmm. Like, you realize like, maybe my shit isn&#8217;t the best. And you get a little humbled. And, and, and I&#8217;m not saying that lightly either. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s probably a very tough experience. I&#8217;ve probably had dozens of those in other areas of my life. Right. Sure. But then learning like, okay, geniuses don&#8217;t operate in the silo.  </p>



<p>They need teams. Yeah. They need people and humans. And then you hit it with the empathy. You pair those two together though, you got something like, I would always kind of say like, I&#8217;m, I, we need a translator because I need you to talk human for a second. Mm-hmm. , because I don&#8217;t understand these things. And I, that was always the role I played.  </p>



<p>I was like, I don&#8217;t understand it, but if I get it, I can help other people get it. Right. A lot of other people get your work, so,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> and you can sell it. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Uh, man, thank you for the, for letting us go over. Um, but speaking of therapists, I have mine in six minutes, but, um, and I can [01:22:00] use the bathroom, but dude, I, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m enjoying this journey with you, my friend.  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Yeah. Right back at you. We&#8217;re gonna have some good luck to your brother.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> We&#8217;re gonna have to find some time this year to get together and hang out. Find a hot tub where it&#8217;s warm or you know, not&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> five degrees, two, two quarries, and two Lindsay&#8217;s in a hot tub. There you go. That&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s the other podcast.  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> That&#8217;s&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> the other podcast thinking the same thing. Just mar marital advice or something.  </p>



<p><strong>cory:</strong> Mine would be what not to do. There you go.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Corey:</strong> Thanks my friend. Good, good luck to your brother and uh, hope everything sorts itself out. Okay. Enjoy some jello.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 15 Mar 2023 21:13:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"WPTavern: WooCommerce 7.5.0 Introduces 3 New Blocks, Expands Support for Global Styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142738";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-5-0-introduces-3-new-blocks-expands-support-for-global-styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2193:"<p><a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/03/14/woocommerce-7-5-released/">WooCommerce 7.5.0</a> was released this week with three new blocks for the Product Archive templates. These include a new Store Breadcrumb block, Product Results Count block, and a Catalog Sorting block, all seen in action below.</p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/03/14/woocommerce-7-5-released/">WooCommerce 7.5.0 Release Post</a>



<p>These blocks were released as part of an effort to <a href="https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/issues/8059">&#8220;blockify&#8221; Product Archive templates</a> so that they can more easily be customized with a block experience.</p>



<p>&#8220;We also want to account for the extensibility within this project by researching the mechanism for extensions to extend the templates and implementing a compatibility layer to keep as many extensions as possible working with blockified templates while giving time for extension developers to update and blockify their extensions,&#8221; WooCommerce engineer Tung Du said.</p>



<p>This project also includes support for <a href="https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/issues/8062">a Notices block</a> so merchants can display store notices to customers as well as determine where they appear.</p>



<p>WooCommerce 7.5.0 has expanded support for Global Styles, so that the Product Button, Product Rating, and Product Price blocks can now be customized more easily in the Site Editor. The Product Rating block now supports padding controls in Global Styles so that store owners can add more spacing around the blocks.</p>



<p>This release also brings in expanded support for the Style Book, which has been available since the WooCommerce Blocks 9.5.0 release. The Featured Product and Featured Category blocks can now be previewed in the Style Book and have Global Style changes applied.</p>



<p>WooCommerce 7.5.0 includes two database updates, 278 commits to WooCommerce Core, and rolls in 170 commits from the WooCommerce Blocks plugin.</p>



<p><a href="https://woocommerce.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/screenshot-2023-02-02-at-12.11.33.png"></a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 15 Mar 2023 19:49:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"WPTavern: #67 – Talisha Lewallen on How CertifyWP Is Hoping To Offer WordPress Certification";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=142702";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/67-talisha-lewallen-on-how-certifywp-is-hoping-to-offer-wordpress-certification";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48696:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, what a WordPress certification might look like.</p>



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



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you all your ideas featured on the show.</p>



<p>Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and you use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Talisha Lewallen.</p>



<p>You might have found your way into WordPress intentionally, or perhaps you stumbled across it and decided to explore further. Whichever it was, you&#8217;ve learned things along the way. Some of it might have been through training, but there&#8217;s likely been some self discovery on the way as well.</p>



<p>Perhaps you&#8217;re a coder, or a designer. In fact, there are dozens of different pathways in the WordPress ecosystem. Given the broad range of knowledge you might possess, how can you prove that you know what you know?</p>



<p>Many industries provide training programs which, when completed successfully, allow you to assert that you were competent in a given area. You&#8217;d want your lawyer or surgeon to have passed through the appropriate programs of study, so that they&#8217;re equipped to do the work.</p>



<p>With WordPress being such a dominant force in the world of websites. Would it be a good idea to have a certification for WordPress? Talisha certainly thinks so, and has founded CertifyWP to try to make that happen.</p>



<p>We approach this subject through the work that she&#8217;s been doing at WPConnects, in which she&#8217;s been trying to provide training to military veterans, so that on the departure from the services they have the prospect of finding work in the WordPress space.</p>



<p>We talk about whether there&#8217;s a need for certification for WordPress and how such a certification would come about. What levels of training does Talisha see as essential, and how many such layers might there be?</p>



<p>We discuss whether the WordPress community is ready for a third party to be certifying people&#8217;s abilities, and whether this strays away from the approach that we&#8217;ve had so far in which routes into employment have relied on other, less formal, methods.</p>



<p>Later in the podcast, we talk about the structure of CertifyWP, and who&#8217;s behind the project. You&#8217;ll hear that it&#8217;s not just Talisha. There&#8217;s quite a few members of the WordPress community who want this project to succeed.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re curious about certifications in the WordPress space, this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Talisha Lewallen.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Talisha Lewallen, Hello Talisha.</p>



<p>[00:04:00] Talisha Lewallen: Hi Nathan.</p>



<p>[00:04:02] Nathan Wrigley: Very nice to meet with you. You&#8217;re welcome on the podcast. Thank you for joining us. Would you mind just introducing yourself and give us some indication of what you do, perhaps who you work for, and how come you are in any way connected with WordPress?</p>



<p>[00:04:18] Talisha Lewallen: Yes. I am Talisha Lewallen. And I am the owner of WPConnects, which is a company that helps US military veterans or really any veterans, but helps them receive training while they&#8217;re active duty, and then when they&#8217;re separating from the military we provide them with mentors and help them find employment within WordPress.</p>



<p>And then I&#8217;ve also started this new venture with some very amazing people within the WordPress community called CertifyWP Foundation. And that is where we are creating a couple of WordPress credentials.</p>



<p>[00:04:51] Nathan Wrigley: So we&#8217;re going to talk about both of those endeavors today, but I think probably the correct road into both of those subjects is if we begin with WPConnects. Now, you mentioned that this is a company that you are the founder of. It&#8217;s got a mission, it&#8217;s connected with the military, but in broad outline really, it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s an endeavor to connect people who are looking for work and are in need of guidance. Do you just want to tell us how all this started and what really the bedrock, the core philosophy is, and who you are helping and how you are helping?</p>



<p>[00:05:26] Talisha Lewallen: Yeah. So I worked at Post Status for a little while, and while we were over there, we kept hearing a lot of people state that they really needed some trained WordPress developers and employees. And so that really got us thinking, you know, it&#8217;s one of those twist of fate things, that we ran into a gentleman named Hector who has a similar company to WPConnects.</p>



<p>And he&#8217;s definitely been a very big mentor to me. So when service members go in and sign up to join the military, a lot of times they&#8217;ve never had an interview, they&#8217;ve never had job experience, they&#8217;re literally just starting their career. Well, when they get out there are transferable skills, but not a lot employers are looking for, if that makes sense. So we want to provide them with, it&#8217;s called transitioning assistance. And we want to provide them with that training and so it helps them transition into the civilian sector a lot easier. There&#8217;s different skills that, you know, we do over here. And then we&#8217;re training them for WordPress front end and backend development.</p>



<p>And if they wanted to do anything else in WordPress. You know, it&#8217;s really expanding past just developer careers. And so we&#8217;re just really helping them find the right connections, along with mentors who have been where they&#8217;ve been and can help them transition and really just know that experience.</p>



<p>And so it really just comes from a place of, I have several members in my family that were in the military, and seeing them transition out of the military was kind of hard. I took the general route over here and I went to high school, college and then started my professional career and seeing my family members and friends join the military, and then when they get out and they had these amazing jobs in the military. They had all of this training and then they get out and they can&#8217;t even get a job.</p>



<p>I heard one of my friends tell me the story of a gentleman who was a military police officer and couldn&#8217;t get a job as a police officer here in the States. And it&#8217;s because he didn&#8217;t have, in that town, you had to have an associate&#8217;s degree. So he didn&#8217;t have the training to become a police officer when that&#8217;s all he did for 10 years in the military, was be a police officer.</p>



<p>And so it&#8217;s very interesting to see the skills that they have and the jobs that these men and women have had, and then transferring it into civilian life. It&#8217;s just not, or hasn&#8217;t been there. They&#8217;ve just been struggling to find these employment. And so we&#8217;re really just reaching out a hand and saying, let us help you and let us get you introduced to these amazing people inside of WordPress. WordPress has the best community that I have ever been a part of, and so it really just seems like a good fit for them.</p>



<p>[00:08:04] Nathan Wrigley: Can I ask, do you give them a curriculum which they follow? In other words, have you mapped out, in the same way that a university may do, you know, you&#8217;d attend a university and you would fully expect that they would provide you with the course and they&#8217;re not just making it up on the fly? Or is it more working with them to try and figure out what they need? It might be a mixture of both. I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>[00:08:25] Talisha Lewallen: Yeah, so how we do it, we have three pathways right now. And this is what makes WPConnects very unique, even within the military training field. So there&#8217;s a saying in the military that&#8217;s crawl, walk, run. So you&#8217;re not just going to get something and immediately start running. So our steps for crawl, walk, run are these three pathways.</p>



<p>The first one is the credentialing assistance program. Active duty and reserve military personnel are able to take a credential and it is funded through the military, so it does not cost them a dime. And they&#8217;re able to take this training. So we currently have the web foundation associate credential. And this is also where CertifyWP comes in.</p>



<p>So currently we&#8217;re using that WFA course. So once they complete that and they decide to transition out of the military. It could be the next month, whenever their service contract&#8217;s up. It can be two, three years later. Whenever they are transitioning out in the last 180 days of their service contract, they can join what&#8217;s called a Skill Bridge program.</p>



<p>So we also have a WordPress Skill Bridge program. This program is an instructor-led 12 week course. And it&#8217;s all over the US. We do it over Zoom, and we&#8217;re looking at a few other platforms. But again, it&#8217;s that instructor is there. There is a curriculum, and they are learning how to, mostly that one is backend development, is what they&#8217;re learning currently.</p>



<p>And then whenever they finish that, we just opened up an apprenticeship program in Texas. And we&#8217;re about to open one in Oklahoma. And so it&#8217;s just this three step process. The apprenticeship program, they have certain skills that they will acquire throughout the year long apprenticeship program. And then they are 100% ready to be employed and be able to do any job that they&#8217;re really wanting to do, because we will give them that individualized skill.</p>



<p>And through all of that, they have a mentor that they can reach out to, and the mentors reach out to them and just help them with anything they&#8217;re struggling with or have questions about. There&#8217;s different terminology that we use in civilian life than they&#8217;ve used in the military. And so really that person&#8217;s just to be there, to just have a helping hand.</p>



<p>But yeah, it&#8217;s a little bit of both. We have a pathway, we have curriculum. And we do change our curriculum. We get feedback from other people within WordPress. Nikki with Liquid Web has been the biggest help for our Skill Bridge program. She comes through and interviews and mock interviews just about every person we have in our programs and helps give us feedback so we can help them gain those interview skills. We have them write a resume and then I go through and help them work on their resume, so then they have that resume whenever they get out as well.</p>



<p>[00:10:59] Nathan Wrigley: I guess if you are in a different industry, there may already have been for a great deal of time, there may have been institutions or pathways like this already set up. You mentioned the example there of the police and that pathway not really working out. But presumably there are other ways that people leaving the military can go and there&#8217;s things that are already concrete. Institutions that they can join. Companies that they can join. Programs that they can go through. But not in the WordPress space.</p>



<p>And given WordPress&#8217; 43, and counting, percent share of the internet, it&#8217;s a really credible career to go in, but it&#8217;s a difficult thing to, I would imagine, to even understand. If you&#8217;ve never touched the internet before, apart from being a user and a consumer of the web, you may have no skills or whatsoever.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;m guessing it&#8217;s bridging that gap. Trying to persuade people that actually there&#8217;s a job in here. It&#8217;s an in demand job. Can be well paid and a good career path, and there&#8217;s a nice community behind it all as well.</p>



<p>[00:11:57] Talisha Lewallen: Right. And you know, we have some people that are literally, I&#8217;ve never touched a computer before. But we also have people that come through the program that have been a part of the satellite operations within the military, or have done tech in the military. But getting that pathway to employment is what they really need. And learning WordPress. There&#8217;s a lot that goes into WordPress that we want our individuals to learn and that will help them grow within whatever job they decide to do. But yeah, so we have two opposite ends of the spectrum usually. We have the ones that have a ton of tech experience, or the ones that have no tech experience.</p>



<p>[00:12:33] Nathan Wrigley: So that was a really nice introduction into the why really, for the next bit of the podcast, which I think will consume the rest of the show. So we&#8217;re going to talk now, instead of talking about WPConnects, we&#8217;re going to talk about credentialing in the WordPress space. And maybe I&#8217;ll begin this way.</p>



<p>If I were to attend a university that everybody&#8217;s heard of, let&#8217;s say I&#8217;ve been to, I don&#8217;t know, Harvard or Cambridge or somewhere like that. That credential that you hold, it&#8217;s a real passport. Everybody understands what that means, and you present it to employers and they get, okay. Right, you&#8217;ve been to a university, we know what that university is about. We understand that it&#8217;s been around for a while and, that&#8217;s a credible piece of paper that you are holding. But curiously, in the tech space, there are things like this, but specifically in the WordPress space, there&#8217;s nothing like this.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a great big hole there, isn&#8217;t there? So people who wish to be employed, going to an employer, you really are relying on testimonials, the CV, the reputation that you&#8217;ve got from your previous employer, and the letters that they may write on your behalf. But there&#8217;s no bit of paper that you can hold, going in cold, to say, I&#8217;ve done this. Look, there it is. It&#8217;s certifiable. This is what I&#8217;ve achieved.</p>



<p>[00:13:51] Talisha Lewallen: Yes. And you know, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re kind of finding out on both ways. Having a credential helps both employers and people looking for employment, especially within the WordPress space, without having that credential. There&#8217;s a lot of people that I would say could very well do certain jobs. But because there&#8217;s not that level of credentialing and there&#8217;s not that standard education.</p>



<p>What does a WordPress developer mean? What can you do if you say you&#8217;re a WordPress developer? And that&#8217;s what a lot of companies are running into. So it really is almost word of mouth. Sometimes I feel like I should say that it&#8217;s almost word of mouth for you to get hired, because somebody&#8217;s worked with you and knows your level of skill. If you&#8217;re new to the WordPress space, it could possibly be harder to find a job because nobody knows who you are, your work ethic and what your skillset is.</p>



<p>[00:14:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So that&#8217;s the premise behind all of this. So I guess I should ask at the beginning, what level are you going in at? Because really in the WordPress space, we could probably come up with 50 curricular that people could follow, probably more. We could have things on the hosting side, speed optimization, SEO, backend WordPress. The sky&#8217;s the limit, but I&#8217;m presuming. That in the scenario that you are dealing with, mainly it&#8217;s getting started?</p>



<p>[00:15:08] Talisha Lewallen: You know, that&#8217;s the interesting thing. So we, so we have the advisory board. I should say, whenever I first decided this is something I want to do, I really want to make this credential. I reached out to several people, because I kept hearing nos and yeses, and so we put together a team of an advisory board and we had this conversation.</p>



<p>Because originally I was thinking about one credential, that would have three tiers. So now we&#8217;ve decided on two. We&#8217;re going to have a front end developer credential and the backend developer credential. So each one will have three tiers. So it starts at base level of here&#8217;s how I download a WordPress. This is how I can add admins. This is how I do, you know, very, very basic.</p>



<p>Then there&#8217;s the next level, and then there&#8217;s the expert level. So to obtain the credential, you must pass, it&#8217;s either one cumulative exam, or you could take it with each course. So you take that exam that has all three tiers of those, and that&#8217;s how you obtain that credential.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;ll be on the backend credential too. It&#8217;ll have that three tiers again, crawl, walk, run. We&#8217;re not going to expect you to be able to do it if you&#8217;ve never been taught the why behind it. So with that being said, one conversation that I had with a gentleman was, well, you know, it almost turned into some people can take tests, but some people can&#8217;t. That doesn&#8217;t mean that they&#8217;re able to do the job. And I said exactly, and that&#8217;s where we are trying to find a way. It&#8217;s still, still alluding me a little bit, but we are trying to find a way to have a practical part to the exam, in the top two tiers.</p>



<p>The first tier exam probably will just be question and answer type exam. But in that expert level, I want there to be a practical part of it. To have people show that, yes, I did learn how to master this skill. And yes, I can do this. And so I think that that&#8217;ll help. Also with the credential and why it&#8217;s, I think, beneficial to WordPress is, you know, WordPress changes sometimes.</p>



<p>We have big changes, we have small changes. So there&#8217;s a certification that you can take. And that can just be a course. Anybody can come up with a course. I could just go to my back room and be like, this is what I think somebody should know for WordPress and create this certification.</p>



<p>And then I never have to re-certify. I never have to go back in and show that my knowledge has not waned, or that I do still know what I&#8217;m doing, and still have that level, just standard level of education. With a credential, there is an advisory board and a board of directors and you have to re-certify every three years, to show that you are still maintaining that knowledge. So it&#8217;s not 10 years down the road, oh look, I took this and I&#8217;m still here. You&#8217;re able to show that you still maintain that level of credentialing.</p>



<p>[00:17:53] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s an industry practice that I&#8217;ve seen before, especially in things like networking. And I mean networking in the sense of cables and connecting routers. The organizations often behind that will require you to come back after a given period of time and re-certify yourself. Just because otherwise that credential kind of loses all meaning, because the technology itself has moved on so far in the three, four however many years. That if you claim to know from 10 years ago what&#8217;s required to be known today, there could be a complete mismatch. Okay, that&#8217;s really interesting to know.</p>



<p>[00:18:25] Talisha Lewallen: There&#8217;s been a lot of thought that went into this credentialing. Along with having, you know, just what I would consider WordPress experts that are being there and really talking about what they feel somebody should know in the WordPress for each level of the credentialing.</p>



<p>But, let&#8217;s see. I think JavaScript has a credential that you have to re-certify. If you&#8217;re a nurse, here in the US you have to re-certify your knowledge. Car mechanics. You know, so there&#8217;s a lot of credentialing out there in every industry that does have that continuing education piece. Just because things do change, the world changes so much, and it&#8217;s very beneficial.</p>



<p>[00:18:58] Nathan Wrigley: So given that you are hoping to find people who wish to take these credentials. Is it open to anybody? We know that your background was connecting with people leaving the military. Is the intention of CertifyWP, and of course I should have mentioned the URL. The URL that you&#8217;ll go to, which of course I&#8217;ll put in the the show notes is certifywp.com, as you&#8217;d imagine, it&#8217;s all spelled in the typical way. No, no underscores or anything like that. Is the intention that these certifications will be open to everybody? Or is there a subset of people? What&#8217;s the audience for this?</p>



<p>[00:19:37] Talisha Lewallen: So the audience for the credential is everybody. CertifywP is for anybody and everybody to take. Our hope would be that companies start looking at their credential and stating that, yes, I want to hire people that have this credential because we know they have this baseline education. So it is open to every single person.</p>



<p>The baseline, the level one certifications I hope to get into some smaller communities. I live here in Oklahoma and so there&#8217;s a lot of Indian capital technology centers and stuff like that, that I would really like them to start taking these credentials and really trying to help the minority groups get more into WordPress as well.</p>



<p>But one thing that has confused a lot of people, and I have to say that this is definitely my fault. I expect everybody to be on my brainwave sometimes. The mention of the DoD, the Department of Defense has thrown a lot of people off. And so they think that this is just a credential for the military and that is really the farthest from it.</p>



<p>And I just have not fully been able to explain that to everybody. But the DoD approving the credential comes in for WPConnects, so that we can train our military. Instead of using that web foundation associate credential, we will use our WordPress credentialing to train them. So they will be trained from the bottom up in WordPress. So that&#8217;s where that has came in. But CertifyWP is open to everybody to take.</p>



<p>[00:21:03] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so just to clarify that. There was a hoop that you had to jump through in order to receive money from the government to train people from the military, but the training is ostensibly the same, but there&#8217;s that slightly strange mixed messaging there. Have I parsed that right?</p>



<p>[00:21:20] Talisha Lewallen: Yes, yeah. And that&#8217;s all it is, is for our military members to be able to take the training where the government pays for it. They have educational grants and stipends in the Army and Air Force, especially here in the US that they don&#8217;t have to take those, they don&#8217;t have to pay for those credentialing. So for us, for them to be able to use those monies, our credential has to be approved through the DoD.</p>



<p>[00:21:43] Nathan Wrigley: Speaking of money, that&#8217;s an interesting segue for a minute. Is the intention for this then to have a fee bound to it? In other words, if you want to take this credential and receive the training materials and the time of the tutors and all of that, that there&#8217;ll be a fee attached to it? And, if that&#8217;s the case, do you have plans to have scholarships and things like that? Is there any of that afoot even as an idea?</p>



<p>[00:22:07] Talisha Lewallen: Yes. That&#8217;s, you know, partly why we actually turned CertifyWP into a nonprofit, is so that we can offer those scholarships. For the credential to be, I almost want to be, say accepted into definitely DoD standards. But if we ever get it accredited, either, there has to be certain qualifications that credentialing meets.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re trying to set up CertifyWP credentials to meet the qualifications for, one, the DoD, but also if we ever do decide to get it accredited. And one of them is that it has to meet the standard for financial costs. So, I think there&#8217;s even a PHP credential, but the other tech credentials out there, ours will have to match that price.</p>



<p>But we are going to be able to scholarship people in. That is definitely our hope. Because again, we don&#8217;t want this to be a gatekeeping thing of you have to pay to play. Not everybody can do that. And so we definitely want to work with people and companies on just trying to get this credential out to the community and making it affordable for every person.</p>
