


<p>Rob Cairns (00:26:06) &#8211; It&#8217;s true. And the other thing I should add to to this discussion is I think the team up at Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, has been much more receptive to comments, suggestions than ever before. And I know some people don&#8217;t feel that way, but I think we&#8217;re in really good hands with Josepha being the executive director of the WordPress project, you know, and things like that. And I know on the Gutenberg side I&#8217;ve gotten to know Matthias Venture, The Gutenberg lead a little bit and, and people like our friends Polly Hack or people like Jessica Frick over at Percival, which is an automatic company. People like that have put us in pretty good hands, frankly.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:26:52) &#8211; Yeah, my personal opinion is automatic has long term commitment to the industry and I&#8217;m really proud to have them as sponsors a lot of automatic and post status and for good reason. But you know a long term commitment to like they have had the opportunity for many years to really really monetize what WordPress is and have held back. I think this is only my personal opinion.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:27:18) &#8211; No facts really share other&#8217;s leadership there. But get go have had a long term commitment because they believe in open source, they believe in the open web and the ecosystem is healthy. When you have a diverse set of people offering services and products to that, so you get great performance. Obviously they know WordPress inside and out and then the support and those are the things that have that kind of wane over time. In any hosting company that I&#8217;ve been, that I&#8217;ve been around, I&#8217;ve had I&#8217;ve been a customer at many of the ones you talked about had clients and friends at many of the ones that you talked about. And but the consistency, I think, is what matters overall. So I agree with you. Agree. Um, okay. So we&#8217;ve talked about a whole lot of stuff. Now I want to talk I want to ask this specific question related to your clients. What are you hearing from your clients about WordPress, how they&#8217;re using their websites? Because I love talking to our agency owners because tip of the spear for me is the people out there doing the work.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:28:20) &#8211; For those people using WordPress, they might not even know or care that there&#8217;s this open source platform underneath it all. But what are you hearing from your clients about what WordPress and working with the websites?</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:28:32) &#8211; Yeah, there&#8217;s a couple things. I don&#8217;t think my clients care what&#8217;s under the hood. So by that mean they don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s a WordPress site, if it&#8217;s a custom site, if it&#8217;s something else, as long as it gives them the results they want. So one of the things I&#8217;ve been pushing in the community for the last ten years is don&#8217;t sell the solution. Sell what it brings you. I&#8217;m a big one. Outcome or something, not how you get there. And if anybody doesn&#8217;t believe that, I suggest you go look up a guy by the name of Simon Sinek. Start with why is his book and find his Ted talk and watch it and watch it again. So sell the the what you get out of it. So that&#8217;s the first one. I also think clients hate to say are dropping the security ball big time right now.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:29:21) &#8211; I&#8217;m working on a site right now where the client couldn&#8217;t find their backup that they were sending to a cloud drive for six days and they took them six days to find out where they put that backup. So one of the things I find with my clients is you have to help them manage their digital assets or their digital stuff, and even more so in small businesses. What happens if the business owner gets run over by a truck tomorrow? What happens if he dies tomorrow? Do you have a succession plan for your business? Do you know how to handle that? Most people don&#8217;t. So that&#8217;s a problem. And then the other thing is, I think a lot of people flock to WordPress because frankly, what are we powering now? 45% in the Internet, 50% somewhere in there. And I think that alone is a selling thing. That&#8217;s attraction. Thing is WordPress is open source. It can&#8217;t be secure the security holes every month. Well, guess what? Microsoft Windows plugs security holes on the first Tuesday every month called Patch Tuesday.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:30:27) &#8211; And the whole business world runs on Windows more than that. Right. And they&#8217;re still plugging holes. Security is a trust factor, not a it happened or it didn&#8217;t happen.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:30:37) &#8211; So I like that because security is a non-essential part of the digital our digital world, particularly our Internet, it&#8217;s a part of it. The real question is how are the people or companies behind that making sure it&#8217;s always secure. I remember talking to a security expert. I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s been eight years now and they said it&#8217;s not a matter this is one that just all they do is security and they go, it&#8217;s not a matter of if we&#8217;ll get hacked, it&#8217;s when and what we&#8217;re doing continually. And I go, that&#8217;s part of the digital age. That&#8217;s where we&#8217;re at. So I love that emphasis from your point. It&#8217;s just not when it&#8217;s if. And what are you doing in the meantime to help proactively do that?</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:31:19) &#8211; And I&#8217;ll take that one more. Corey I have a saying in my business that&#8217;s not if you&#8217;ll be hacked, it&#8217;s when you&#8217;ll be hacked.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:31:25) &#8211; And how do you recover where I take it? So I kind of look at this mess I&#8217;ve been dealing with, and a big part of the problem was the client didn&#8217;t have a site updated, the client didn&#8217;t have the PHP version updated, the client couldn&#8217;t find the backup. You see where this is going? Yep. And it&#8217;s we got to take care of those assets and we got to treat them like the they&#8217;re important. So that&#8217;s that.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:31:52) &#8211; Just like you would lock your car or your house at night or your car if you&#8217;re driving into the supermarket or the grocery store, whatever that is, you&#8217;d lock your car because, you know, you do those things. We don&#8217;t even think about those things. They&#8217;re so embedded now and we need to be doing that. I love this message. We need to be doing that with our digital assets.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:32:11) &#8211; We&#8217;re a mutual friend of ours. You know, Kathy&#8217;s N over at K very well. And I turned to Cathy in January and said, I&#8217;m going to make you a prediction.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:32:20) &#8211; And she said, Oh, I don&#8217;t like your predictions are usually right. And I said, I&#8217;m going to declare 2023 as a year of the vulnerability, the first week of January. And that was coming out of the whole LastPass debacle that happened. And we all know about that one. And sure enough, and I think it&#8217;s partially awareness, but I think there&#8217;s a multitude of factors and it&#8217;s kind of played out that way. The other thing I&#8217;m hearing from clients is clients don&#8217;t realize that websites have to have a budget attached to them for their business. So marketing budget and they say, Oh, we do it in house. And I say, okay, so what&#8217;s your hourly rate worth? Oh, it&#8217;s worth $40 an hour. How many hours a month do you do? Oh five. So your marketing budget is 40 times five. So that&#8217;s the other thing. Business has got to take this stuff seriously and start to budget for.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:33:17) &#8211; I love that Social Security and then budget, and that&#8217;s the mindset.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:33:21) &#8211; So, you know, a lot of the conversations I&#8217;ve been having is the recognition from clients that their website is not just valuable, it&#8217;s an integral part of how they do business. Covid accelerated a lot of that. I think it&#8217;s like, Hey, we got so many physical location, bricks and mortar type businesses realizing when you can&#8217;t actually see a person face to face. So I have two way of a way to be able to do business. So I love that it&#8217;s integral. So security, part of life budgeting, you need to budget for it just like you would any other part of your businesses in the essential part of your business. And so many of the agency owners have talked to here at Post Status, they the clients are recognizing that it&#8217;s in some of the instances, I would say more like a B2B. They see it&#8217;s at a very, very valuable part of their overall sales strategy and they value it deeply. Some run their whole operations or half operations, you know, and items and post those two, we run our whole operation through online space so it feels foreign.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:34:26) &#8211; But that&#8217;s not the way business is traditionally. It&#8217;s, you know, you go to a store, you travel, you walk, you ride in a horse and buggy or a car to get to. Things have changed. And that seems like what I&#8217;m hearing, too, is that mindset needs a change of like this is all a part of business domains, websites, all the platforms you might be on, all as important as that door that opens up into your business.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:34:51) &#8211; 100% and then look at the criticality of it. So, for example, if you&#8217;re an e-commerce site that&#8217;s making 30,000 US a day profit, then you need a different level of support than somebody that&#8217;s got a brochure site that is out there just to be the face of their business. So you got to think about things like that, too. Very much so.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:35:12) &#8211; Okay, so security and budget. Anything else on your mind about when you when you&#8217;re working with clients and how they&#8217;re valuing their websites? Any perspectives you have to share there too.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:35:22) &#8211; I think a lot of clients in this day and age are unrealistic and think that&#8217;s the world we live in. So it&#8217;s a very much an I want it now world. It&#8217;s I want it yesterday. There&#8217;s no patience out there like to tell you I don&#8217;t think clients are any different.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:35:39) &#8211; So. Yeah. So it&#8217;s the physical part of business, which I have a friend that has a restaurant supply business and I understand how like when you&#8217;re, you know, stove or cooktop is down, they can&#8217;t sell. And then now that okay, got to have it now. And that service side is pretty intense for them. I can see that now being applied to the business is where they see it as essential. I want to say that&#8217;s a good part, but when it comes with some mindset change of okay, we need to be able to budget for that and pay for that and, and knowing like in the middle of the night or whatever it is to have that kind of service turnaround is not always possible or realistic.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:36:27) &#8211; And communication is a big part of it too. I don&#8217;t think some clients communicate well, don&#8217;t think some agencies communicate well. Like, for example, I&#8217;m going on vacation next Wednesday. Yay me, I&#8217;ve already sent out an email to my entire client was saying, By the way, the only thing I&#8217;ll deal with while I&#8217;m away is a website down issue. Everything else sits till I get home and just tell them upfront. Now, they might not like to hear it, but that&#8217;s you&#8217;re allowed to take time off. You&#8217;re allowed to recharge.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:36:58) &#8211; The good communication, getting ahead of it to manage those expectations? Yeah, absolutely vital. All right, Rob. Well, anything else you want to share that you&#8217;re excited about, that you&#8217;re working on or doing?</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:37:10) &#8211; I think the big thing is the security side of it. Think, think. We just got to be aware and and make sure you&#8217;re aware and if and if anybody needs help agencies otherwise reach out, be glad to help them and be involved in the community.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:37:25) &#8211; That&#8217;s a big part of what you and I do. You do not repost status. As you know, I co-manage a large LinkedIn group with Courtney Robertson. I&#8217;ve got a podcast that&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s good for business awareness, but it&#8217;s also good for the community too. So get involved. The community. Somebody if you can go to a word camp, go says the guy who&#8217;s got no time to go to work. Camps right now have not been to a five check by I missed word camp Buffalo Oh boy did I take stuff for not being on that one because that was a that&#8217;s an hour and a half away. I didn&#8217;t go to Montclair this weekend because, again, I&#8217;ve got conflicts. And the other thing is, look after you and your family and look after how you feel. Look after your health. Because if you don&#8217;t do that, you can&#8217;t run your business. So keep that.</p>



<p>Cory Miller (00:38:14) &#8211; Absolutely. Well, thanks, Rob, for being on post staff. Appreciate your work in the community and what you do with WordPress out in the world to our story.</p>



<p>Rob Cairns (00:38:22) &#8211; Thanks for having me.</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:"Sat, 19 Aug 2023 03:00:33 +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: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:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:109:"WPTavern: Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker Plugin Adds New Frontend Highlighting Feature Funded by NASA";s: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=147975";s: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:120:"https://wptavern.com/equalize-digital-accessibility-checker-plugin-adds-new-frontend-highlighting-feature-funded-by-nasa";s: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:4865:"<p><a href="https://equalizedigital.com/">Equalize Digital</a>, a WordPress accessibility products and services company, has added a new frontend highlighting feature to its free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/accessibility-checker/">accessibility checker plugin</a>, which is used to perform audits on self-hosted sites. The feature was <a href="https://equalizedigital.com/nasa-funds-development-of-front-end-highlighting-feature-for-equalize-digital-accessibility-checker/">funded</a> by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), through Equalize Digital&#8217;s consulting work on the new NASA websites.</p>



<p>NASA recently launched the <a href="https://beta.nasa.gov/">beta version</a> of its WordPress-powered flagship site, which WordCamp US attendees may hear about next week during the team&#8217;s sessions, including Friday&#8217;s keynote address: <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/session/friday-keynote/">For All Userkind: NASA Web Modernization and WordPress</a> and another presentation titled <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/session/hands-on-with-nasas-new-digital-platform/">Hands on with NASA’s new digital platform.</a></p>



<p>Equalize Digital was contracted to perform accessibility testing, user testing with screen reader users, and provide accessibility governance recommendations.</p>



<p>&#8220;As part of the contract for those services, they also contracted us to develop this feature for the plugin,&#8221; Equalize Digital CEO Amber Hinds said. &#8220;They have an enterprise license but we decided in collaboration with them that we would make it a feature in the free plugin so everyone could benefit, not a paid-only feature.</p>



<p>&#8220;They were actually really interested in that because it&#8217;s part of their mission to give back to humanity.&#8221;</p>



<p>Prior to developing the frontend highlighting feature, the accessibility checker plugin only had reports inside the post edit screen, with output that is nearly indecipherable for less technical users who are not accustomed to reading HTML.</p>



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



<img width="1493" height="709" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/screenshot-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147988" />



<p>The new frontend highlighting feature makes the accessibility report&#8217;s output far more approachable for users who may not be developers. It puts a &#8220;view on page&#8221; link next to each issue found in the report, which brings users to the frontend where the element in question is highlighted with a dashed pink box. It also displays a panel that explains the issue in a way that is easier to understand as well as how to fix it.</p>



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



<img width="1800" height="1053" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Accessibility-Checker-Front-End-Highlighting-on-NASA.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147987" />



<p>The report in the admin has been updated as well so that it&#8217;s easier to read. A new image column displays any images related to issues and the Actions column includes a &#8220;View on Page&#8221; link leading to the issue highlighted on the frontend. </p>



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



<img width="2640" height="1710" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147991" />



<p>Hind said her team is working on making the tool more friendly to content creators and not just a development tool. The plugin will stay on the NASA website to help their team as they add and edit content over time.</p>



<p>&#8220;In the future, we&#8217;re planning to add the ability to jump to the element in the block editor as well,&#8221; Hinds said. &#8220;(That&#8217;s slightly tricky because we scan the whole page, not just the content area so we have to exclude elements created by other parts of the editor or theme.)&#8221;</p>



<p>Thanks to NASA&#8217;s funding, the new frontend highlighting feature is available to users on the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/accessibility-checker/">free version of the plugin on WordPress.org</a>.</p>



<p>“Our goal is to make accessibility testing easier for every WordPress user, not just developers,” Equalize Digital CEO Amber Hinds said. “Accessibility Checker was developed to include a robust free version with this in mind. We want to make building websites that work for people with disabilities standard practice and were excited to work with NASA to make accessibility testing reports easier for non-developers to understand and take action on. Adding this feature to the free plugin was a no-brainer for us. We’re looking forward to seeing more WordPress website owners finding and fixing accessibility problems on their websites.”</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, 18 Aug 2023 21:00:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"Do The Woo Community: Woo AgencyChat Live with Ash Shaw and Mitch Callahan";s: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=76066";s: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://dothewoo.io/woo-agencychat-live-ash-shaw-mitch-callahan/";s: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:410:"<p>Join Ash Shaw from LightSpeed and Mitch Callahan from Saucal as they share insights from their WooCommerce agencies. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-agencychat-live-ash-shaw-mitch-callahan/">Woo AgencyChat Live with Ash Shaw and Mitch Callahan</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:31:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"WPTavern: WordPress Community Summit Travel Fund Contributes $48K in Assistance for Attendees";s: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=147963";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-summit-travel-fund-contributes-48k-in-assistance-for-attendees";s: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:2052:"<p>This year&#8217;s WordCamp US includes a Community Summit, an invitation-only contributor-focused event that will take place prior to the main conference on August 22-23, 2023, in National Harbor, Washington, DC. It will be the first summit in six years, since the last one was held in Paris, France in 2017.</p>



<p>Historically, the summit has offered contributors the rare opportunity to hold in-person discussions on important topics across teams. In order to ensure the gathering is diverse and inclusive, previous community summit organizers have included a travel assistance program to remove the financial barriers of attending.</p>



<p>The 2023 Community Summit travel fund is <a href="https://communitysummit.wordcamp.org/2023/about-the-community-summit-travel-fund/">providing $48,000 in travel assistance</a>, thanks to a group of sponsors that includes Automattic, A2 Hosting, Elementor, and Weglot. The funding will support 38 attendees with roundtrip transportation ($31K for 24 people) and hotel stays ($16,500 for 66 hotel nights for 22 people).</p>



<p>Attendees have been reminded about the <a href="https://communitysummit.wordcamp.org/2023/non-attribution/">non-attribution guideline</a> which enables the event to offer a safe and inclusive environment for collaboration where comments are not attributed to specific individuals. Discussions, photographs, recaps, and summaries can be shared as long as they abide by the non-attribution guideline. </p>



<p>The <a href="https://communitysummit.wordcamp.org/2023/schedule/">schedule</a> has been published, featuring 26 discussion topics. Contributors will have dedicated sessions to discuss the criteria for delaying the upgrade of foundational tech, understanding contributor leadership roles, refining Five for the Future for a robust WordPress community, accessibility in the WordPress project, open source participation in global legislation, backwards compatibility in Gutenberg, among other interesting topics that lend themselves to cross-team collaboration.</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, 18 Aug 2023 04:02:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"WPTavern: WP Community Collective Funds First Fellowship for Accessibility Contributor Alex Stine";s: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=147922";s: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/wp-community-collective-funds-first-fellowship-for-accessibility-contributor-alex-stine";s: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:3400:"<img width="2227" height="1305" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/alex-stine.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-141764" />



<p>The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a non-profit organization created to support individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has <a href="https://www.thewpcommunitycollective.com/2023/08/17/press-release-wppc-funds-first-fellowship/">funded its first fellowship</a>. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the funds designated for the fellowship.</p>



<p>WPCC reports that the fellowship received donations from 59 individuals and organizations that want to support the cause of improving the open source project&#8217;s accessibility. The organization uses <a href="https://opencollective.com/thewpcc">Open Collective</a> as the fiscal sponsor for its 501(c)3 status, enabling donations to be classified as charitable giving. All donations coming into the organization are transparent and publicly documented. </p>



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



<img width="1906" height="1180" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Screen-Shot-2023-08-17-at-5.43.37-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147952" />



<p>The fellowship provides Stine with five paid contribution hours per week for six months, which allows him to continue his work on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/search?q=alexstine">accessibility reviews and patches in WordPress core</a>. It includes a travel stipend for WordCamp US where Stine is volunteering as a co-organizer and participating in the Community Summit. As the first to embark on a WPCC fellowship, Stine will also help establish a framework for future Accessibility Fellowship cohorts.</p>



<p>&#8220;I am really excited for the future as this will allow me to commit real time to improving the project,&#8221; Stine said. &#8220;The support I received from the community shows me there are others who recognize the importance of accessibility.</p>



<p>&#8220;Time itself is the biggest win here. The funding allows me to focus more of my day on WordPress and less on side work. The main projects include the Gutenberg post editor.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stine recently conducted an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H15BUb6_GU">accessibility audit of Gutenberg</a>, which shows the current state of the block editor in WordPress 6.3. This video is very enlightening for anyone who hasn&#8217;t yet seen how Gutenberg works with assistive technology like a screen reader.</p>



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

</div>



<p>Stine has performed many accessibility audits for different products in the WordPress ecosystem. The fellowship funds enable him to continue his contributions on existing WordPress open source accessibility initiatives without having to take on as much consulting work.</p>



<p>“Alex has demonstrated a deep commitment to creating an inclusive experience for all WordPress users,” WPCC co-founder and president Sé Reed said. “We are delighted by the community’s willingness to invest both in Alex and in the future of WordPress accessibility. In supporting his work, we aim to improve accessibility across the entire project, from the core software to the greater WordPress community.”</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 17 Aug 2023 22:04:51 +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:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Do The Woo Community: The Metamorphosis of a Woo Agency with Jonny Martin";s: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=76052";s: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:72:"https://dothewoo.io/the-metamorphosis-of-a-woo-agency-with-jonny-martin/";s: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:409:"<p>Jonny Martin from Built Mighty joins Robert, Robert and Mary Voelker from WooCommerce in this Woo AgencyChat.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/the-metamorphosis-of-a-woo-agency-with-jonny-martin/">The Metamorphosis of a Woo Agency with Jonny Martin</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:23:39 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress.org blog: WP20 – A Heartfelt Thanks";s: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=15471";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/08/wp20-a-heartfelt-thanks/";s: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:19589:"<p>Earlier this year, WordPressers around the globe united to celebrate 20 years of community and innovation. There were parties, blogs, videos, and social media posts aplenty. And, of course, the trending hashtag, “#WP20”.</p>



<p>Throughout April and May, community members reflected on their journeys &#8211; what brought them to WordPress and its personal meaning. The stories, tweets, and videos were inspiring, nostalgic, and even humorous at times. There was swag, and the cakes were epic.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Let’s take a look!</h2>



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-3 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">On WordPress turning 20, and the Audrey Scholars program: <a href="https://t.co/Etwh8H6xh4">https://t.co/Etwh8H6xh4</a></p>&mdash; Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1662582800451776512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 27, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WordPress celebrates 20 years tomorrow. It's grown from a comment on a blog post to a web spanning phenomenon. Thanks to an outstanding community and the freedoms of Open Source. Happy Birthday, WordPress! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> <a href="https://t.co/fght4XMJXb">pic.twitter.com/fght4XMJXb</a></p>&mdash; Mike Little (@mikelittlezed1) <a href="https://twitter.com/mikelittlezed1/status/1662013891856027649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Look at this cute <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> cake from <a href="https://twitter.com/RicksBakery?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RicksBakery</a>! <a href="https://t.co/f88H3usR5R">pic.twitter.com/f88H3usR5R</a></p>&mdash; Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@JosephaHaden) <a href="https://twitter.com/JosephaHaden/status/1662562362979676162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 27, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Tenemos regalitos para los que vengáis esta tarde a la Meetup.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/PSPsbWluv7">pic.twitter.com/PSPsbWluv7</a></p>&mdash; Meetup WordPress Torrelodones (@WPTorrelodones) <a href="https://twitter.com/WPTorrelodones/status/1671918091398258688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 22, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WordPress</a> is turning 20 years old today! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <br /><br />Happy birthday to WordPress and its entire community! from me and <a href="https://twitter.com/MariekeRakt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MariekeRakt</a> <a href="https://t.co/9N9T0SnsdL">pic.twitter.com/9N9T0SnsdL</a></p>&mdash; Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) <a href="https://twitter.com/jdevalk/status/1662398779360702465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 27, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Happy 20th birthday, <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WordPress</a>! Our Cebu meetup was a success! <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/14.0.0/72x72/1f382.png" alt="🎂" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />…and our community is growing. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4af.png" alt="💯" class="wp-smiley" /> Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/enspaceCebu?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#enspaceCebu</a> for hosting our party! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPressCebu?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPressCebu</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WPCebu?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WPCebu</a> <a href="https://t.co/TUFoKjuoxq">pic.twitter.com/TUFoKjuoxq</a></p>&mdash; Cebu WordPress Meetup (@WPCebu) <a href="https://twitter.com/WPCebu/status/1664957630241189888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 3, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I'm sure you've seen by now, but today is WordPress' 20th birthday! Thank you to <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@photomatt</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mikelittlezed1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mikelittlezed1</a> for following through with a seemingly wild idea. I don't think anyone could have predicted we'd end up where we are today. Happy birthday <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WordPress</a>! <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f389.png" alt="🎉" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/tAZRlYThuS">pic.twitter.com/tAZRlYThuS</a></p>&mdash; Jon Desrosiers (@desrosj) <a href="https://twitter.com/desrosj/status/1662616708064985088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="de" dir="ltr">Hier ist der Recap vom letzten Zürcher <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Meetup?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Meetup</a> im <a href="https://twitter.com/westhive?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@westhive</a> inkl. Audioaufzeichnungen und Slides der Präsentationen, sowie ein paar visuellen Eindrücken des Abends. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BBQ?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BBQ</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/IycEcb4DQL">https://t.co/IycEcb4DQL</a></p>&mdash; WordPress Zürich (@wpzurich) <a href="https://twitter.com/wpzurich/status/1674695261694701568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="qme" dir="ltr"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCEU?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WCEU</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCEU2023?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WCEU2023</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/Uodqd2OotM">pic.twitter.com/Uodqd2OotM</a></p>&mdash; Osom Studio WordPress &amp; WooCommerce Agency (@OSOM_STUDIO) <a href="https://twitter.com/OSOM_STUDIO/status/1667524236406145024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Celebrating <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCEU?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WCEU</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@photomatt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/JosephaHaden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JosephaHaden</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/matias_ventura?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@matias_ventura</a> <a href="https://t.co/9LM9HnEfYn">pic.twitter.com/9LM9HnEfYn</a></p>&mdash; Felix Arntz (@felixarntz) <a href="https://twitter.com/felixarntz/status/1667536517705736193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>



<p>Want to see more tweets? <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/live/">Check out the tweet wall here.</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bits &amp; Bytes</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net">Official website for WP20</a></li>



<li>The #WP20 hashtag was used at least 18,000 times between March 1 and June 8, 2023 on social peaking on May 27 with at least 2,700+ metions</li>



<li>165+ meetups took place to celebrate WP20</li>



<li>At least 4,661 people attended a meetup across six continents</li>



<li>100+ kits of swag were shipped to meetup organizers</li>
</ul>



<p>Want more social media for WordPress? Check out the official accounts here:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress">Twitter</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/wordpress/">Instagram</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WordPress/">Facebook</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/wordpress">LinkedIn</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/wordpress">YouTube</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.pinterest.com/WordPress/">Pinterest</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/wordpress">Tumblr</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Snapshots from WP20 Celebrations</h2>




<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/Fz4aD6_XwAICdz-.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15527" />



<img width="769" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxhuvvbacaagn6c.webp?resize=769%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15518" />



<img width="768" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxhspnlaqainz1f.webp?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15523" />



<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxjpa3oamaaetri.webp?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15516" />



<img width="828" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxjparaaqaa1iji.webp?resize=828%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15517" />



<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxj2btqaaaakewo.webp?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15522" />



<img width="768" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxkqdpmxwaa9zvr.webp?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15524" />



<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxkanzxwyami0ja.webp?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15519" />



<img width="1024" height="941" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxkanzxwcaativc.webp?resize=1024%2C941&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15525" />



<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxoi01sxgamyqi7.webp?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15520" />



<img width="1024" height="851" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxoukosaeaaa-sk.webp?resize=1024%2C851&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15521" />



<img width="1024" height="769" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/fxm7nexxsaa5vec.webp?resize=1024%2C769&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15526" />




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



<p>WP20 celebrations, swag, websites, social media, graphics, and so much more could not have happened without the wonderful contributions of so many. Beyond the organizers of the 165+ events, there were many people working behind the scenes to ensure WordPress got the recognition it deserved. Thank you to everyone who worked behind the scenes to organize the meetups, create swag, and to spread the word. Some of these hardworking folks include: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nomadskateboarding/">Mark Andrew</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joen/">Joen Asmussen</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/tinobarreiro/">Tino Barreiro</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">Chloe Bringmann</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mysweetcate/">Cate DeRosia</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/triforcepower/">Em DeRosia</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/">Beatriz Fialho</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/">Nicholas Garofalo</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ngreennc/">Nyasha Green</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nickhamze/">Nick Hamze</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meaganhanes/">Meagan Hanes</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kellychoffman/">Kelly Hoffman</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pablohoneyhoney/">Pablo Honey</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/">Santana Inniss</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/markoserb/">Marko Ivanovic</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/">Angela Jin</a>, Winston Koone, Megan Marcel, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ninianepress/">Jenni McKinnon</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/">Jonathan Pantani</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sereedmedia/">Se Reed</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurlittle/">Lauren Stein</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fcoveram/">Francisco Vera</a>, Andrew Wikel, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamwood/">Adam Wood</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Some More Fun</h2>



<p>A WordPress event is not complete without a Wapuu, and not only was there one, but there was a whole campaign to color it in! Thanks to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/triforcepower/">Em DeRosia</a> for creating the commemorative Wapuu!</p>




<img width="737" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/Fs33fvqWcAAKRbx.png?resize=737%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15532" />



<img width="737" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FrU8oOFaQAEZLPY.jpeg?resize=737%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15528" />



<img width="722" height="956" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/Ft8DCn9WcA08xYZ.jpeg?resize=722%2C956&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15531" />



<img width="832" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FtyXUDZXgAA1G1K.jpeg?resize=832%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15534" />



<img width="819" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FuvXFqHWAAY7Yob.jpeg?resize=819%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15533" />



<img width="1024" height="829" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FxHdOAdXwAE_4w9.jpeg?resize=1024%2C829&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15530" />



<img width="1024" height="712" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FtsDGoiaUAA91ug.jpeg?resize=1024%2C712&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15535" />



<img width="709" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FtxoedaacAYaIeq.jpeg?resize=709%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15536" />



<img width="737" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/FxIvqkGWIAEPKt8.jpeg?resize=737%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15529" />




<p>The Marketing team ran an interactive campaign, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/02/20-days-to-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress-from-blogs-to-blocks/"><em>From Blogs to Blocks</em></a>, a series of prompts across 20 days for WordPress enthusiasts to celebrate all-things WordPress.</p>



<p>Additional campaigns took place on social media and included prompting folks to share their favorite WordPress memory and most cherished WordPress swag item, to highlight the 21 contributing teams, and even to share a birthday greeting.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">My fav <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> swag, which I use daily! This was the speaker swag from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCBos?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WCBos</a> 2019. <a href="https://twitter.com/melchoyce?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@melchoyce</a>, I think you designed this stunning logo? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WP20?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WP20</a> <a href="https://t.co/1sEIEMGzM9">https://t.co/1sEIEMGzM9</a> <a href="https://t.co/F0ufF9msqP">pic.twitter.com/F0ufF9msqP</a></p>&mdash; Angela Jin (@AngelaSJin) <a href="https://twitter.com/AngelaSJin/status/1650832707683864578?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 25, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>We had lots of digital goodies too! From 3D desktop wallpaper, to selfie-props for the celebrations, and more. <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/swag/">You can download them here</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-jetpack-tiled-gallery aligncenter is-style-rectangular"><div class="tiled-gallery__gallery"><div class="tiled-gallery__row"><div class="tiled-gallery__col"><img alt="" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/08/wp20-selfie-glasses-1024x576.png?ssl=1" /><img alt="" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/08/wp20-celebrate-desktop.jpg?ssl=1" /></div><div class="tiled-gallery__col"><img alt="WP20" src="https://i1.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/08/wp20-logo-blueberry3x-1024x783.png?ssl=1" /></div></div></div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Got Swag? Need Swag?</h2>



<p>It&#8217;s not too late to order your WP20 commemorative items. <a href="https://mercantile.wordpress.org/product-category/wp20/">Find shirts, stickers, and more, while supplies last</a>!</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>See you in five years for the 25th!</strong></h2>



<p>Sign up here to stay in the &#8220;know&#8221;!</p>


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	</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:54:03 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"WPTavern: group.one Acquires BackWPup, Adminimize, and Search &amp; Replace Plugins";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=147855";s: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://wptavern.com/group-one-acquires-backwpup-adminimize-and-search-replace-plugins";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2191:"<p><a href="https://www.group.one/en">group.one</a>, a European cloud hosting and digital marketing services provider, has <a href="https://inpsyde.com/en/inpsyde-announces-sale-of-backwpup-adminimize-and-searchreplace/">acquired</a> the <a href="https://backwpup.com/">BackWPup</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/adminimize/">Adminimize</a>, and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search-and-replace/">Search &amp; Replace</a> plugins from Inpsyde. Together the products have more than 1.1 million active installs and will join group.one&#8217;s growing portfolio of WordPress products, which include <a href="https://wp-rocket.me/">WP Rocket</a>, <a href="https://imagify.io/">Imagify</a>, and <a href="https://rankmath.com/">Rank Math SEO</a>.</p>



<p>Inpsyde sold the plugins to focus more on its consulting and product services.</p>



<p>&#8220;This sale lets us concentrate on our core competencies and work more closely with our clients, like PayPal, Payoneer, and Mollie, providing the know-how to develop and reach their full potential with new avenues for advancement,&#8221; Inpsyde CEO Alex Frison said.</p>



<p> The acquired plugins will be managed by the development team at WP Media, one of group.one&#8217;s brands, expanding its offerings beyond optimization and SEO to include backup and site management capabilities. </p>



<p>&#8220;Backup and recovery solutions are crucial to protect websites against data loss and we look forward to further developing BackWPup, along with Adminimize and Search &amp; Replace,&#8221; group.one CEO Daniel Hagemeier said. &#8220;Together with WordPress hosting from WP.one and one.com, and our flagship products WP Rocket, Imagify, and Rank Math SEO, WordPress users can now come to group.one to optimize, secure, maintain and promote their online presence.”</p>



<p>When asked what specific features are being prioritized on the immediate roadmap, group.one representative Simon Kraft said &#8220;the smooth transition over to WP Media&#8221; is their focus following the sale. He was unable to comment on whether the commercial versions of the acquired plugins would be subject to any pricing changes.</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, 17 Aug 2023 03:08:18 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"WPTavern: Should WordPress.org Support Threads Auto-Close After 6 Months?";s: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=147304";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://wptavern.com/should-wordpress-org-support-threads-auto-close-after-a-year";s: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:5389:"<p>WordPress.org&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forums/">support forums</a> are a vital resource and communication tool for users supporting their own sites and developers extending the software. Visiting the forums often means users have gotten stuck somehow and need to have a successful support experience in order to continue on their WordPress journeys. They are looking for help deciphering the meaning of error messages, migrating sites, debugging their sites after an update, and many other common struggles of self-hosting.</p>



<p>A <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7161">ticket</a> on Meta trac, which was opened three weeks ago, proposes that WordPress.org remove auto-closure from support forum threads and instead add a warning that the thread is old. Threads currently auto-close six months after last reply, unless manually closed sooner than that.</p>



<p>Amber Hinds, plugin author and CEO of Equalize Digital, made a case for instances where it is necessary to respond to an old thread:</p>



<ul>
<li>As a plugin dev, we forgot to subscribe to a plugin&#8217;s forum and only saw support threads many months later. Currently, there is no way to provide assistance on these threads.</li>



<li>If a user requests a feature that is not currently available and you release it many months later, it would be nice to update their support request and let them know.</li>
</ul>



<p>Hinds referenced a conversation on Post Status&#8217; Slack where Matt Mullenweg recommended removing the closure for old threads completely and adding a warning in its place:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Let&#8217;s move away from auto-closing to just having a warning that you&#8217;re replying to an old thread</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Not all participants in the discussion are in favor of leaving support tickets open. Several contributors contended that this approach can lead to unproductive replies piling up or multiple people jumping in on threads with similar unrelated issues, making it difficult for developers to solve the original request. </p>



<p>&#8220;Old topics mostly attract spam, me-too-pile&#8217;ons and random replies,<br />its very rare when an actual reply is needed to something that has no activity for&nbsp;<strong>six months</strong>,&#8221; WordPress support forums moderator Yui said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Current policy is to leave such topics closed, however, making an&nbsp;<strong>exclusion</strong>&nbsp;and manually reopen it at request can be made possible when the reasons for it are&nbsp;<strong>compelling</strong>&nbsp;(It can be discussed on Support team weekly chat, if needed).&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress accessibility contributor Joe Dolson is in favor of giving plugin authors the ability to determine when a thread gets closed, a modification that partially addresses the issues at play.</p>



<p>&#8220;It would help alleviate it to give plugin authors the ability to close a thread,&#8221; Dolson said. &#8220;Though when you have thousands of open support threads, that would still be a pretty significant potential burden.</p>



<p>&#8220;I think there should be a better way of handling closed support threads &#8211; it&#8217;s a problem that auto-closed threads literally *cannot* be re-opened because they&#8217;ll just auto-close again. But I&#8217;m dubious about just leaving them open.</p>



<p>&#8220;At the least, I think that removing the auto-closing *must* come with some ability for plugin authors to close threads; otherwise this would become totally unmanageable.&#8221;</p>



<p>Changing thread closure policy could also impact the metric displayed on plugins, indicating how many issues have been marked as resolved in the last two months. If more people are allowed to jump in on threads with them open, the resolved threads metric may not be as meaningful.</p>



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



<img width="806" height="510" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Screen-Shot-2023-08-16-at-4.06.11-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147891" />



<p>Hinds recommends a hybrid approach, keeping auto-close in place but allowing plugin contributors to reopen threads, restarting the clock for auto-closure.</p>



<p>&#8220;I discovered 12 support tickets yesterday on a plugin I had not realized we were not subscribed to, which I want to at least comment on to see if they still need help,&#8221; Hinds said. &#8220;I can&#8217;t do this. It&#8217;s a frustrating experience for me and clearly a poor user experience for the original poster or anyone else who encounters that thread with a similar problem.</p>



<p>&#8220;Another option might be to auto-close them but add a button that allows them to be reopened by plugin contributors that sets another six-month (or maybe a shorter time period) timeline before auto-close.&#8221;</p>



<p>It&#8217;s easy to forget that most people do have a vast network of WordPress professionals available to answer questions for them on Twitter or other networks, so the forums remain an important lifeline for users. Contributors have not yet come to a decision about whether leaving threads open for longer will provide a better experience or not. The discussion on <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7161">changing the auto-close policy</a> continues on Meta trac.</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, 16 Aug 2023 21:10:39 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"Do The Woo Community: More WordCamp US Speakers Tips and Teasers";s: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=76044";s: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/more-wordcamp-us-speakers-tips-and-teasers/";s: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:387:"<p>Listen to Courtney Patubo Kranzke, Sean Blakely, Jonathan Desrosiers, Sumner Davenport and Destiny Kanno.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/more-wordcamp-us-speakers-tips-and-teasers/">More WordCamp US Speakers Tips and Teasers</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 16 Aug 2023 17:02:00 +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:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp US Speakers Tips and Teasers";s: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=76029";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-us-speakers-tips-and-teasers/";s: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:394:"<p>Here tips and teasers from George Woodard, Danielle Zacaro, Hari Shanker, Aid Correa-Jackson, Ryan Smith and Shambi Broome</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-us-speakers-tips-and-teasers/">WordCamp US Speakers Tips and Teasers</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:37:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"HeroPress: New life thanks to WordPress – Una nueva vida gracias a 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:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=5738";s: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:130:"https://heropress.com/essays/new-life-thanks-to-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-life-thanks-to-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:7201:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/081423-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: WordPress empowered me to craft a better life for my family. WordPress me permitió forjar una vida mejor para mi familia." />
Hear Jennifer&#8217;s story in her own voice.






<p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#espanol">Este ensayo también está disponible en español.</a></p>



<p>Hello, my name is Jennifer Farhat, and I reside in Burnaby, a charming city nestled in British Columbia, Canada. My role as a Frontend Engineer at WebDevStudios, an amazing and globally distributed company entirely devoted to WordPress, allows me to collaborate with a diverse team across the world. Today, I&#8217;m excited to share my journey with you.</p>



<p>I was born In &nbsp;the enchanting land of Venezuela, a South American gem renowned for its warm-hearted people and diverse climate, It has snow-dusted landscapes in Mérida, gentle plains of Los Llanos, and the sun-soaked beaches along the eastern shores.</p>



<p>Before my journey to British Columbia, I enjoyed a vibrant life on Margarita Island, often dubbed the &#8220;pearl of the Caribbean.&#8221; This paradise on earth nurtured my passion for tennis from a young age. I climbed the ranks and became one of the top players in my country. Transitioning into a Tennis Coach, I imparted my knowledge to players of all ages. This continued even as I pursued my studies in computer science, graduating in 2010. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>My path naturally evolved to web development, and despite the bittersweet decision to step away from coaching, it marked the beginning of my journey as a dedicated web developer. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>My path intertwined with WordPress, a platform I quickly grew to adore. The company I worked for began embracing it, using WordPress to cater to our clients&#8217; needs.</p>



<p>However, the backdrop of my homeland&#8217;s struggles was undeniable. By 2016, the economic and political turmoil had escalated. Basic essentials became hard to find, despite having the means to acquire them. This dire scenario pressed upon my family, particularly my eight-month-old daughter who faced shortages of formula and diapers. The pivotal moment arrived in August 2016 when my family and I embarked on a tough choice – leaving our homeland. Our journey took us through Colombia before finally settling in the picturesque city of Vancouver, where reality felt like a picture-perfect postcard.</p>



<p>The initial phase was an uphill battle, marked by paperwork hurdles and employment challenges due to our uncertain legal status. Just when we were about to give up and were contemplating leaving Vancouver, an opportunity surfaced – centered around WordPress. This newfound role not only offered the means to secure legal status but also laid the foundation for a brighter future for my daughter and my two-year-old son, who was born in our new home years later.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Grateful for this transformation, I credit WordPress for extending a lifeline at a crucial and difficult moment of my life.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>It empowered me to craft a better life for my family. In return, I remain dedicated to contributing to the community that has given me so much, knowing that my efforts will always fall short of the boundless generosity I&#8217;ve received.</p>



<h1 id="espanol" class="kt-adv-heading5738_ccceef-d5 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Una nueva vida gracias a WordPress</strong></h1>



Escucha el ensayo de Jennifer con su propia voz



<p>Hola, mi nombre es Jennifer Farhat, y actualmente resido en Burnaby, una encantadora ciudad ubicada en British Columbia, Canadá. Mi rol como Frontend Engineer en WebDevStudios, una asombrosa empresa 100% remota a nivel global completamente dedicada a WordPress, me permite colaborar con un equipo diverso alrededor del mundo. Hoy, estoy emocionada por compartir mi historia.</p>



<p>Nací en el maravilloso país &nbsp;de Venezuela, una joya sudamericana reconocida &nbsp;por su gente cálida y su clima variado. Cuenta con paisajes diversos, desde la increíble &nbsp;Mérida, las suaves llanuras en Los Llanos y hasta playas bañadas por el sol en las costas orientales.</p>



<p>Antes de mi travesía a British Columbia, disfruté de una vida vibrante en la Isla de Margarita, a menudo llamada &#8220;la perla del Caribe&#8221;. Este paraíso en la tierra nutrió mi pasión por el tenis desde joven. Escalé posiciones y me convertí en una de las mejores jugadoras de mi país. Pase luego a ser Entrenadora de Tenis, compartiendo mis conocimientos con jugadores de todas las edades. Esto continuó mientras estudiaba en la Universidad, graduándome en 2010. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Mi camino naturalmente evolucionó hacia el desarrollo web, a pesar de la agridulce decisión de apartarme del deporte, marcando el inicio de mi camino como una desarrolladora Web dedicada al 100%. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Mi camino se entrelazó con WordPress, una plataforma que rápidamente llegué a adorar. La empresa para la que trabajaba comenzó a adoptarla, usando WordPress para atender las necesidades de nuestros clientes.</p>



<p>Sin embargo, la situación por la que pasaba mi país era innegable. Hacia 2016, los problemas económicos y políticos habían escalado. Productos de básica necesidad &nbsp;se volvieron difíciles de encontrar. Esta difícil situación &nbsp;afectó a mi familia, particularmente a mi hija de ocho meses que enfrentaba escasez de fórmula y pañales. El momento crucial llegó en agosto de 2016, cuando mi familia y yo tomamos la difícil decisión de dejar nuestra patria. Nuestro viaje nos llevó primero a Colombia y finalmente a la pintoresca ciudad de Vancouver, donde parece que uno vive dentro de una un postal perfecta.</p>



<p>La fase inicial fue una batalla cuesta arriba, marcada por obstáculos &nbsp;y desafíos laborales debido a nuestra incierta situación legal. Justo cuando estábamos a punto de rendirnos y pensábamos en dejar Vancouver, surgió una oportunidad de trabajo centrada en WordPress. Este nuevo rol no solo ofreció los medios para asegurar un estatus legal, sino que también sentó las bases para un mejor futuro para mi hija y mi hijo de dos años, quien nació años después en nuestro nuevo hogar.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Agradecida por esta transformación, le doy crédito a WordPress por brindarme una oportunidad en un momento crucial y difícil en mi vida. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Me permitió forjar una vida mejor para mi familia. A cambio, estoy comprometida a contribuir a la comunidad que tanto me ha dado, sabiendo que mis esfuerzos siempre quedarán cortos frente a la generosidad sin límites que he recibido.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com/essays/new-life-thanks-to-wordpress/">New life thanks to WordPress &#8211; Una nueva vida gracias a WordPress</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</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, 16 Aug 2023 14:34:25 +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:15:"Jennifer Farhat";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"WPTavern: #87 – Jonathan Wold on Guildenberg, What It Is and How It Aims to Help Product Owners";s: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=147811";s: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/podcast/87-jonathan-wold-on-guildenberg-what-it-is-and-how-it-aims-to-help-product-owners";s: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:65646:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case Guildenberg, what it is and how it aims to help product owners.</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 Jonathan Wold.</p>



<p>Jonathan has been deeply involved in the WordPress community for almost two decades. He began writing tutorials and freelancing, which eventually died him to the agency world, where he worked on large enterprise projects. In the past five to six years, Jonathan has shifted his focus to the broader WordPress ecosystem. He&#8217;s also had the opportunity to work at WooCommerce and collaborate with the team at Automattic. Despite the demands of his busy career, Jonathan&#8217;s passion for WordPress has only grown stronger over the years.</p>



<p>Jonathan is one of the co-founders of Guildenberg, and in the podcast today we discuss what this project is and how it aims to revolutionize the WordPress product ecosystem.</p>



<p>We start the conversation by highlighting the importance of behavior in the WordPress community and the core values that drive the platform. Autonomy, meritocracy, utility, and giving credit where credit is due. Jonathan emphasizes the significance of giving credit to the original creators of work, even though it may not be legally required.</p>



<p>We move on to talk about how Guildenberg aims to solve some of the key problems faced by WordPress product owners, such as monetization, compatibility and distribution. Jonathan envisions a system where product owners pay a fee for distribution of their products. With a portion of that revenue going back to the Guildenberg project. By aligning incentives and providing economic motivations for contributors, Guildenberg seeks to create a sustainable and thriving ecosystem for the open web.</p>



<p>We get into the inspiration behind the name Guildenberg, which combines the idea of Gutenberg and the guild institutions from medieval Europe.</p>



<p>We also discussed the team&#8217;s longterm vision of creating an app store for WordPress that spans the majority of installations, offering monetization options, and enforcing compatibility standards.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re a WordPress developer, who&#8217;s keen to find a way to create visibility for your product this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Jonathan Wold.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Jonathan Wold. Hello, Jonathan.</p>



<p>[00:03:58] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Hey Nathan, how are you?</p>



<p>[00:04:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very good. Jonathan&#8217;s joining us, I think, for the second time on the Jukebox podcast. We&#8217;re going to have an in depth conversation about something which is close to his heart. It&#8217;s called Guildenberg. I&#8217;m going to make a link in the show notes to an article which I think probably would be a wise idea to read to give you some perspective.</p>



<p>Before we begin and dive into the subject matter though, Jonathan just tell us who you are. Tell us about your WordPress journey.</p>



<p>[00:04:27] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So I&#8217;ve been immersed in the world of WordPress now for about 18 years. I started out writing tutorials and I did a bunch of freelance early on. Spent a couple of years in the agency world doing some big enterprise stuff. And then spent the past five, six years or so focused on the ecosystem more broadly.</p>



<p>I also got to spend some time at WooCommerce. The lovely folks over at Automattic, and yeah it&#8217;s been quite nonstop for me. I think a good indicator is that I like WordPress even more 18 years later than I did when I started. And I think that the community is a massive part of that. That&#8217;s what got me hooked initially.</p>



<p>Folks on the .org forums answering my questions and showing me, oh wow, there&#8217;s something about this like open source space. And not just open source, but WordPress specifically that drew me. And yeah never looked back.</p>



<p>[00:05:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Great, thank you. So we&#8217;re going to be talking about something called Guildenberg. I&#8217;m going to repeat that word, Guildenberg. It&#8217;s not the word that I&#8217;m used to saying, which is Gutenberg. So we&#8217;ve got the berg bit, that&#8217;s the same. But then we&#8217;ve got this guild bit at the beginning and I guess maybe Europeans, I don&#8217;t know, maybe I&#8217;m mischaracterizing that, but it feels like Europeans who have a thirst for historical knowledge perhaps know what guilds are.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know if it was something that came across the pond to North America, but did it? And if it didn&#8217;t, what are guilds?</p>



<p>[00:05:57] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So that&#8217;s a fun way to frame it. So first I&#8217;ll call out that one of the things that I&#8217;ve loved about this community. Because it is by default, like international in nature, I&#8217;ve had the privilege of being exposed to a lot of ideas that might not have been as prevalent to me with my North American base otherwise.</p>



<p>I can&#8217;t recall where the concept of the guild first came up, but where I went to immediately was reading about the history of guilds in Europe, right? That&#8217;s the foundation for a lot of my initial thinking about this. Here in the States we have the concept of unions, which has some parallels, but it&#8217;s focused more on trade and specific lines of work.</p>



<p>Yeah my basis for this was reading about the history of guilds in Europe. The positives and the negatives from a few different perspectives and I found that super helpful.</p>



<p>[00:06:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think at least anyway, that the guild traditionally was an organization which would bind together people who did a very similar thing. So, for example, you might have, I don&#8217;t know, a printer&#8217;s guild. Or you might have a blacksmith&#8217;s guild or something like that. And it would be a kind of club, for want of a better word, of people so that they could share their experience. They could share their knowledge. They could keep up to date with what the other people were doing. I think I&#8217;ve got that right.</p>



<p>[00:07:18] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Yes, and it&#8217;s curious too that just by the nature of who&#8217;d be involved you&#8217;d often have competitors. Yet they were working together. There&#8217;s benefits and trade offs, right? But overall though the idea is that they&#8217;d work together to improve the quality of their work.</p>



<p>So you had guilds that took this quite far where they also have seals that, you know, used by the guild to say okay, we have a quality approval here. Others who it was more loose, like an association where we&#8217;re supporting each other, sharing ideas, et cetera. Some got pretty heavy into regulating production and monitoring, and there&#8217;s a lot of different facets of it.</p>



<p>The heart of it though, and my primary interest is facilitating cooperation in what would otherwise be a decentralized space. And many of these just somewhat by their nature, the folks who&#8217;d be involved in these guilds, they were individual entrepreneurs doing their own things and decided to come together to facilitate cooperation, collaboration around opportunities of mutual interest.</p>



<p>[00:08:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you&#8217;ve put a article together. It was written at the latter part of last year, August, 2022. It&#8217;s called a Guild for WordPress Businesses. And helpfully you start out explaining your knowledge of what a guild is. But the intention of that really is to begin the conversation in which you propose, perhaps there should be a WordPress businesses guild. And you&#8217;ve come up with the name Guildenberg which for obvious reasons, kind of fits the ecosystem just perfectly.</p>



<p>Now in order to have a solution to something, presumably you have to have a problem for it to be solving. So again, right near the top of the article you outline three problems which you see going on in the WordPress product business space at the moment.</p>



<p>Now I could introduce them but I feel it&#8217;s probably better to just hand it over to you and you tell us what your thoughts are.</p>



<p>[00:09:11] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So quick shout out to my co founder Anna Maria Radu. She came up with the name, and it was a fun process. Like what are we going to call this thing? And she&#8217;s the one who picked it up and combined the idea of Gutenberg and the guild together. So she gets that credit, among many other credits.</p>



<p>The key starting point here was like what problems are we setting to work on, right? And it was that problem set that we&#8217;ll touch on in a moment that became the basis for saying, okay, what construct could we use to solve these? And that&#8217;s where the concept of the guild began to fit in.</p>



<p>So within WordPress specific product businesses, and I think that&#8217;s important to call out too. I care about the agency space, I have a lot of context and background for that. But what I think, let me take a step back. For about five, six years now I&#8217;ve been thinking more and more about WordPress as an ecosystem, and thinking about, okay, what are some of the leverage points?</p>



<p>What are ways that we can grow and improve this ecosystem? And for me that matters because of the position that WordPress takes within the context of the open web. I believe that the healthier our ecosystem is, the better it is for the web.</p>



<p>I like the proprietary platforms that they hold. They can foster innovation. They can bring clear value. I don&#8217;t want to see a web though dominated by proprietary platforms. And so I look at WordPress&#8217; place today, it&#8217;s great in terms of its market share. We want to see it become even healthier and stronger, and be in a place where the proprietary and open source are meeting together. But there&#8217;s a balance of power there.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s a starting point. What can we do to grow the ecosystem and make it stronger? At first, and for several years, I was quite convinced that helping hosting companies work together was going to be how we move the ecosystem forward. I still think that&#8217;s a piece of the puzzle.</p>



<p>But what I focused on, what I realised, in that process is that you have to figure out a way to align incentives. And there were some inherent problems with facilitating cooperation amongst the hosts. And that could be a whole topic in and of itself. What I ended up settling on though is that of the three primary business groups in the ecosystem, you have the service providers, that&#8217;s your agencies and freelancers, you have the hosting providers, and you have the product companies.</p>



<p>I believe that the product companies have the greatest opportunity for leverage, to grow and improve the ecosystem. Because they&#8217;re the ones that are directly touching, okay so there&#8217;s that idea that they have the greatest leverage. And I think that the reason why is when you look at WordPress through this framing of being an operating system for creating on the open web, which is something that Matt Mullenweg has been talking about for years now. He first introduced that idea.</p>



<p>If you think about WordPress as an operating system, and then you think about the products as being on the app store, that&#8217;s where I think it starts to come into perspective.</p>



<p>You need a whole ecosystem of hosting providers and service providers, but the products are like the apps that bring the core value. And if you think about it there&#8217;s very few people these days who would use WordPress without any plugins, without any apps, if you will.</p>



<p>And so I ended up settling on, okay, product companies are the key leverage point for being able to grow and strengthen the ecosystem. So what problems do they have? And there are three problems that stand out to me that are faced by product companies in the space. And I&#8217;m going to focus first on those that are just WordPress specific. SaaS is another category but they have some of their own, they have a different set of problems.</p>



<p>For WordPress founders the first one is what I just call like monetisation. This category of monetisation. A lot of folks who grew up in the WordPress space, created products, often had developer backgrounds. Monetisation has been something that we&#8217;ve struggled with. Whether it&#8217;s pricing, whether it&#8217;s business model, whether it&#8217;s just that we&#8217;re copying someone else who didn&#8217;t get that figured out. We tend to be poorly monetised in the space.</p>



<p>And the key here is it&#8217;s misaligned with value. There are end users, for instance, that look at the price of a WordPress product and don&#8217;t trust it. You&#8217;re telling me that I&#8217;m going to build my business on this product that only costs a couple hundred dollars. I&#8217;m supposed to have confidence in that when the SaaS counterparts are thousands of dollars.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s more to it than that. It&#8217;s great to be able to pass on value to the end users but it needs to be a conscious decision. And a lot of times folks making decisions on monetisation don&#8217;t have a strong basis for it. And they&#8217;re not focused on aligning with value to the end user. They&#8217;re just picking an arbitrary price. So that&#8217;s problem one.</p>



<p>Problem two is compatibility. And it&#8217;s this idea that a lot of these products just don&#8217;t work well together. Not because they don&#8217;t intend to but because there&#8217;s so many different ways of doing things. There aren&#8217;t any shared, well there are intentions towards shared standards, but there&#8217;s missing alignment of interest to actually enforce those standards and improve them.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s like product developers will do so because they care about it, but those tend to be the minority. And oftentimes some of the most popular plugins don&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s a lot of work and there&#8217;s not a lot of incentive to make things all work well together.</p>



<p>The last one, and I think the one that shows the most, that sticks out the most, that&#8217;s the most pressing, the most problematic for folks, is distribution.</p>



<p>You have these products that solve a clear problem for their audience. There&#8217;s a clear value proposition. They have that, what we&#8217;d call product market fit. And yet the majority of their addressable market within the WordPress ecosystem has no idea that they even exist. According to WebPro&#8217;s data we have 92 million active WordPress sites.</p>



<p>And on the one hand, if you&#8217;re building a product in the WordPress space that&#8217;s fantastic, right? You have a massive addressable market that you can get to. But on the other, there&#8217;s no clear cut way today to actually get to that addressable market. For the simple fact that all of those 92 million are spread out over thousands of different hosting companies, who are somewhat effectively their own ecosystems in and of themselves.</p>



<p>[00:15:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Makes perfect sense. So let&#8217;s deal with those in turn. The monetisation piece where you talk about the fact that businesses are often either undervaluing their offering, or there&#8217;s a perceived, prejudice is the wrong word, but just the idea that things in the WordPress ecosystem ought to be cheap, everybody else is cheap so I should probably be cheap because I need to undercut my main competitor.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t really have any insight into the world outside of WordPress, so I don&#8217;t really know how far that argument carries. Perhaps you do? What I&#8217;m really asking for there is a bit of clarification. Are we orders of magnitude behind in terms of the value that we put on our products? Are we, for example, charging a fifth, a quarter, a third of what you might typically find elsewhere?</p>



<p>[00:16:02] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So it depends. I would say at least from what I&#8217;ve observed and my sense of things on just the small business front, we&#8217;re behind but not terribly behind. Where it really starts to show up is with mid market and enterprise pricing. If we even go that far, right?</p>



<p>Like enterprise certainly makes use of WordPress and there&#8217;s a pretty big disconnect overall between value and price and business model even. And just for instance, offering enterprise level support.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s hard to pin down because sometimes it will be based on verticals, like you&#8217;ll have a WordPress creator or WordPress product that will focus on a particular vertical. But they&#8217;re not really matching the expectations in that vertical. It&#8217;s all over the board. On the one hand, it&#8217;s delightfully autonomous, people have the freedom to do whatever they want.</p>



<p>The real problem that I see with this is that they&#8217;re not explicitly aligning it with value to that end user, which can vary. An enterprise, for instance, they have a whole different, they&#8217;re doing millions of dollars a month in revenue and the plugin that they&#8217;re using as a basis for that is only a couple hundred dollars, that kind of scares them, right? Like how do we know that we&#8217;re gonna get the support that we need? And the author hasn&#8217;t even necessarily considered that.</p>



<p>[00:17:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It is interesting as well, you were talking about products that were in the region of sort of $200 and presumably that was the sort of southern estimate. But it&#8217;s not difficult to find plugins that are considerably cheaper than that as well. You know the number 49 and 47 dollars for a license, for a single site license, for something might be something that you see all over the place. And it does beg the question, how many of those licenses does a product developer need to move in order for their business to become worthwhile to them?</p>



<p>You know if you&#8217;re going to be putting in the time to have that as your single focus, which in many cases I&#8217;m sure the developers would love to have. You really do have to be shifting tens of thousands of those, for support and all of the things that go along with that. So yeah, I think undervalued is an interesting term there.</p>



<p>[00:18:08] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> And it&#8217;s interesting. Some folks might infer from this that, oh we just want to like price fix the ecosystem. Like no that&#8217;s not interesting to me at all. I love folks having the autonomy to price whatever they want to. What I&#8217;m concerned about, because it&#8217;s also a good way to drive innovation too, right?</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re going to charge more it should be tied to value. It&#8217;s not just about extracting. It&#8217;s how do you align with additional value to the end user? And just the general challenge I see, and I think this is one that we solve through education and through modeling, is developers and product owners, entrepreneurs who just aren&#8217;t asking the right questions, and aren&#8217;t focused on that value piece.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s like oh okay, well my competitors are generally doing this so I&#8217;ll just do less. Or they&#8217;ll think oh if I just do less I&#8217;ll get more volume. But they&#8217;re not considering the longterm consequences of charging less, and whether they&#8217;ll be able to support it longterm.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s a problem that we solve I think through education and through better examples in the space, and we&#8217;re starting to get more of those. But I just wanted to point out it&#8217;s not like I just want everyone to increase their prices. I want people to align with value for the end users. And a lot of cases that does include increasing your prices so that you can provide more value to them. But that&#8217;s not always the case. Sometimes it&#8217;s keep the price low.</p>



<p>[00:19:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. And then compatibility was the second point that you mentioned. This is really curious, isn&#8217;t it? Because I guess if you&#8217;re developing your own SaaS platform, really you don&#8217;t have any compatibility problems. You simply need to develop your own stack and you can ship whatever you like, whenever you like. So that doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>



<p>But also if you are building on top of, let&#8217;s say WordPress&#8217; rivals, for example Wix or Squarespace or Shopify. Again, you&#8217;ve really only got one target to worry about. And that&#8217;s what Wix are doing and what Shopify are doing. So long as you&#8217;re keeping abreast of all of that, you&#8217;re good to go.</p>



<p>Whereas, as you say, in the WordPress space, 60,000 plus I think it is at the moment, WordPress plugins, the combinations there are almost infinite. And that really can upset your business. I would imagine that a typical WordPress company support channel is constantly filled up with emails saying, well I&#8217;ve got these plugins and they don&#8217;t seem to work together, what do I do? And yeah, what do you do? So yeah, this is interesting endeavor.</p>



<p>[00:20:21] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> This especially shows up with the hosting providers, right? They&#8217;re the ones who often hear this first from the end users. And it&#8217;s a bit classic, right? If something&#8217;s not working, a lot of times folks will, one of the standard advice is well try to disable all the plugins and then kind work backwards from there. Which is a bit of a nightmare scenario really. To uninstall all your apps, I&#8217;m like what I don&#8217;t to do that. Like I picked these, there&#8217;s a reason for all this.</p>



<p>So this often comes up with hosts and compatibility is overall in all my conversations with hosts, like one of, if not the number one cost centre for WordPress is stuff that just doesn&#8217;t work together.</p>



<p>And again, I think that the core problem here is aligning incentives. It&#8217;s open source. One of the things we love about WordPress is the flexibility to do whatever we want. What often happens, and there&#8217;s benefits to this, but you&#8217;ll have developers who will do their own custom interfaces. They&#8217;ll try some new things. They&#8217;ll bring this thing, this development practice in or that one. They&#8217;ll try to use this SDK or something else. Like it&#8217;s just all over the board.</p>



<p>The flexibility is great, but the trade off really shows up on the compatibility front where these things just don&#8217;t work together. And there&#8217;s a lot of cost to the end user or to the developer, when they&#8217;re trying to make things work with someone else. Including just a lot that&#8217;s outside of their control entirely. You could care about compatibility, put in all the effort, maybe you even create a patch for some other plugin author, and there&#8217;s no guarantee they&#8217;ll ever do anything with it.</p>



<p>[00:21:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s true. I speak to developers fairly frequently, some of whom do literally patch other people&#8217;s plugins so that they can get their support ticket queue down to zero. Yeah that&#8217;s really interesting. I guess the model that we would love to have, on the one hand, would be something akin to you know the Apple ecosystem where if an app is literally crashing the iPhone, Apple will just remove it from the ecosystem until it&#8217;s mended.</p>



<p>Now that&#8217;s brilliant in the one sense that you can just get rid of all problems with the flick of one switch. But the downside of that is that system is about as closed as it possibly gets, and 30% of the revenue goes to Apple in that case. So swings and roundabouts really. Seemingly this is going to be a really difficult one to tackle.</p>



<p>So is your endeavor around compatibility really just promoting what compatibility is? And just letting people know what the guidelines are for developing things and just making people good citizens of the WordPress development landscape.</p>



<p>[00:22:45] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> That&#8217;s a part of it, but I really think we have to align incentives. Let&#8217;s talk about the app store piece. My longterm vision, so on the one hand, I&#8217;m okay with this looking like any number of things so I&#8217;m not caught up on the details of it. But like my longterm vision and what we&#8217;re laying the groundwork now with Gildenberg is for there to be a quote unquote app store that spans 80% of all the WordPress installs out there. That solves a lot of these problems built into it, right?</p>



<p>You&#8217;d have the monetisation piece taken care of by just accounting for standard models and having examples, etc. You&#8217;d have compatibility built in by having standards that are enforced at that submission level. If you&#8217;re going to be in this app store you have to follow these standards and guidelines and best practices. There&#8217;s a review process, etc.</p>



<p>The incentive is there because you&#8217;re offering distribution. They&#8217;re like yeah this is worth doing. A developer is like yeah we&#8217;ll align around this shared standard which is ideally community created because we want the distribution on the other side of this.</p>



<p>Now no one has to do it. This is I think where the difference shows up between what Apple has done. And there&#8217;s some comparisons to like, what do you have in the Android ecosystem? Our goal is not a hundred percent. Our goal is just the majority of WordPress installs. There&#8217;ll always be people who don&#8217;t want it.</p>



<p>But it&#8217;s more than enough to be significant and to create those aligned incentives for folks to say oh yeah I&#8217;m going to follow these standards. And we get the, I don&#8217;t want to just have guidelines and playbooks and things that kind of on their own. There needs to be real incentives for people to do it. And distribution to me is the big incentive.</p>



<p>[00:24:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So distribution then, which is the third part, you mentioned it in terms of the 40 plus percent of the web which is using WordPress. And I think I&#8217;m right in saying that, is this really around discoverability as much as anything else? It&#8217;s trying to get traction for your product in a marketplace where you&#8217;re up against thousands of people. So if a guild were to be created there would at least be some structure, some formal network that you could rely upon to help spread the word if you like.</p>



<p>[00:24:50] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Yeah it&#8217;s a combination of things. Discoverability is one of them and there&#8217;s different ways that you solve that. But .org for all the things that it does well is not built around, nor incentivized to solve, commercial interest problems. Not today at least, not that it couldn&#8217;t be in the future.</p>



<p>The plugin review team is volunteer led. We have specific guidelines for specific reasons. And while we want to see growth and improvement there&#8217;s only so much that you can expect given the incentives, right? Like it&#8217;s volunteers and they work really hard to be as agnostic and neutral as possible. And at the end of the day, just from a end users and a product perspective, from a product perspective being listed on .org is no guarantee that you&#8217;ll be discovered by anyone, right? It&#8217;s par for the course, but .org is not trying to solve the discoverability problem. And ultimately plenty of folks get stuff like outside of .org.</p>



<p>[00:25:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the idea then behind all of those three problems is that you&#8217;ve got a potential solution, this idea of a guild.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s move on to that then and describe what that guild looks like. Again, I guess it&#8217;s probably apropos right now to say you have not really fixed upon these ideas. This is the beginning of this conversation.</p>



<p>You presumably would love for people having heard this podcast get back in touch with you and say I like this idea. I want to put my idea to you, see if we can take it in this direction. But yeah just outline what is the guild that you would hope to build? What are the designs that you&#8217;ve got behind it?</p>



<p>[00:26:22] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> The core idea right is to say okay what vehicle, what construct, is best suited to solving these three problems? It&#8217;s all rooted in this idea of finding and aligning incentives. So the App Store vision is the North Star. And the idea behind Guildenberg is okay, how do we lay a foundation for these things?</p>



<p>So what I&#8217;ve been focused on over the past year or so with my co founders is, what&#8217;s the right economic engine for this? Like there&#8217;s a ton of stuff that we want to do. We want to create playbooks, open source things, facilitate just a bunch of stuff in the space. I&#8217;m super interested in how this connects to Five for the Future.</p>



<p>And for all of that it&#8217;s like we need a strong economic engine that enables us, that aligns with value, that builds momentum in the right direction and enables us to do these things. And in my piece I originally outlined some different ideas on revenue models et cetera.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s become clearer since, and what I&#8217;m focused on now is this the distribution problem itself. Like monetisation and compatibility, those are things that are going to become clearer with time. What I&#8217;m focused on now is okay, how do we start helping products today grow through distribution? And distribution itself then becomes our core economic engine. That&#8217;s the business of Gildenberg Inc, Gildenberg .com if you will.</p>



<p>And so basically what we do today is we take products, we onboard them, we evaluate, review things, give them guidance, give them a roadmap. And then we help those products get distribution deals with hosting providers. And we&#8217;re basically the ones facilitating that.</p>



<p>And so the idea, and I&#8217;m curious to see where it evolves, is to say okay let&#8217;s solve those three problems now and do so in a way that lets us build momentum and scale over time. And I think there&#8217;s a lot of things yet to be worked out and much of that&#8217;s going to come through who we work with, right?</p>



<p>So right now it&#8217;s a small group of products, but I&#8217;m rapidly expanding that. And with each new product that comes in, where they&#8217;re bringing new ideas, new questions. The heart of this has been how do we create something that naturally builds on itself as we have success with what&#8217;s in front of us?</p>



<p>[00:28:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The model that you&#8217;ve just described is you&#8217;re building this, as a company comes in you&#8217;ll onboard them and give them the benefits that you can provide at the moment. Presumably the idea is that over time more and more of these will come on.</p>



<p>And then you will have some kind of quorum of companies, enough to make this guild have enough clout out there so that you&#8217;re widely recognized. The name is out there. Everybody knows there&#8217;s benefits in this. But you&#8217;re in that kind of onboarding phase.</p>



<p>Now it strikes me that if I were to join a guild, maybe there&#8217;s a piece of me coming to you that would have some sort of exclusionary principle in the back of my mind. In other words, okay I am, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say I&#8217;m an SEO plugin or something like that. And I&#8217;m thinking to myself, I&#8217;m seeing Guildenberg all over the place. This looks like something I could be a part of. But I want to be the SEO person. How do we work around that?</p>



<p>Because I think in the traditional guild structure that was part of the deal, right? You got to be part of the guild and then you were the person in and we closed the door a little bit behind you because you&#8217;re living in that geographical area or whatever it may be.</p>



<p>So the way to describe that here would be, okay you&#8217;re the SEO plugin. You&#8217;re the form plugin. You&#8217;re the speed optimization plugin. From the article that I&#8217;ve read you don&#8217;t want to do that. You want to welcome as many people in as you can, but from a product point of view, I guess I&#8217;d be thinking well I don&#8217;t really want to be in a guild with all my competitors.</p>



<p>[00:30:03] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> That&#8217;s a great question. And I think this is a good example where like the guild framing is, I think, the right framing for how we facilitate cooperation and collaboration amongst peers and that includes competitors.</p>



<p>The piece of it though that puts it all in perspective is the app store direction, right? Like an app store that only has one SEO plugin for instance, I would argue and I think most people would agree, is not the best for the end users, right? And this is certainly the case for the hosting providers as well. They&#8217;re looking for options.</p>



<p>So for us to do our jobs effectively, it&#8217;s not for us to like decide who&#8217;s the best one in this space. It&#8217;s to level the playing field to the benefit of the end users and for the host. Like okay let&#8217;s have security standards now, performance standards. Let&#8217;s have standardized design kits that can be used, right? Let&#8217;s abstract out the baseline stuff and let the product creators innovate on top of that and let the market determine. Let the end users determine which ones are the best through that feedback loop.</p>



<p>So I think there&#8217;s people who certainly won&#8217;t like it. Oh there&#8217;s a competitor in here as well. But if you just take it through the app store framing, I certainly don&#8217;t want to be part of an app store or have one that only has one app for a particular category. It&#8217;s like I want choices.</p>



<p>[00:31:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah it&#8217;s interesting because it&#8217;s just the language of guild I think is what promoted that question because it kind of feels like that maybe was the value of a guild back in the day.</p>



<p>[00:31:31] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> And certain types of guilds, right? One of the common examples was of a trade craft. Everyone in the guild was a certain type of trades person and they&#8217;re all competitors. So to your point yes, sometimes there was geographic differences but there&#8217;s also plenty of these be in the same city. But they were aligning their interests against sometimes other guilds. As long as you&#8217;re clear on what you&#8217;re after there&#8217;s not a problem with people competing.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s going to be a challenge I&#8217;m certain of that. And part of why it&#8217;s so important to get the incentives right is much of that can sort itself out when you&#8217;re clear on what you&#8217;re here to do. And for me I&#8217;d always bring it back to hey we&#8217;re here to create a better ecosystem for end users. We all benefit from that.</p>



<p>And so for instance one of the dilemmas ends up being, someone creates a great WordPress plugin. How do they handle it becoming part of Core? Or if some piece of it&#8217;s sort of taken out. And those are examples of things that we have to come to terms with.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m sure that there are people who are upset when Apple baked a flashlight into iOS. The flashlight apps kind of died overnight, right? But from an overall good of the ecosystem perspective, I think the majority of folks would agree that that was useful and that was best to have just built directly in.</p>



<p>So there are things like that that you have to deal with. And my hope is that the construct of a guild on the people side of things gives us a place to do those things fairly and openly, rather than just like arbitrary and behind the scenes. There will be challenges. I think if we stay fixed on where the incentives are and aligning them, it&#8217;s going to be at least easier to navigate the challenges.</p>



<p>[00:33:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. You mentioned earlier that the kind of app store, for want of a better word, was the North Star. Now you&#8217;re not there yet. Presumably the distribution piece, which is what you said you&#8217;re concentrating on at the moment, that&#8217;s the low hanging fruit, because if people come to you you&#8217;re very well connected, you have that within your grasp. You can connect people. You know people in the ecosystem.</p>



<p>The other bits and pieces will come over time. But now this raises the always difficult question of finance. Because something like this will not be easy. And if it&#8217;s going to stretch just beyond the bounds of you and your co founder then presumably real work needs to be done, real time needs to be spent. And although that could be done with volunteers, really what would be the difference with what we&#8217;ve got now?</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s talk about that. Let&#8217;s talk about how you&#8217;re thinking of structuring this financially. I&#8217;m guessing at the moment people that come to you are paying you a fee. Maybe not. But in the future do you want to move this to more of a, I don&#8217;t know, subscription model, a percentage of revenue model? Something like that.</p>



<p>[00:34:10] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So great question. That&#8217;s a lot of what we focus on figuring out. So I have two co founders, Anna Maria Radu and Matt Fields. And so the three of us together, sort of the core base. We started this a year and a half ago but we&#8217;re slowly but surely also expanding the team.</p>



<p>So the way that we make money, we have the Gildenberg Partnership Program, that&#8217;s the one that focuses on distribution. For a product that wants to get distribution they come in and they pay an onboarding fee. That will vary. It generally starts at like 10,000 up to 30,000, but it&#8217;s dependent on sort of what&#8217;s involved.</p>



<p>And that covers our work on especially the first two things. So we look at the monetisation, we look at compatibility, we create a roadmap for that product. Like, all right, these are the things that you need to do to get ready for distribution. We look at the foundation for partnerships.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s just time upfront there that&#8217;s involved. My hope is to see that reduce as time goes on, right? Become more standardized, more just open source as we create playbooks. That&#8217;s a starting point but the real heart of the business is a rev share model. So what we do is when we bring in a product and we do distribution deals with them, our standard approach is 25% of the deals in the first year. And then it goes down to 15% on average thereafter.</p>



<p>So if we take in a new product and we help them sign a million dollar deal then $250,000 of that revenue goes to Guildenberg. And so we&#8217;re not taking from their existing. We&#8217;re not tapping into that business. It&#8217;s all on what we add which is the heart of what brings folks to us to begin with.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s great about that is that we&#8217;re able to be really upfront with the hosts. When we go to a host and bring them in as distribution partners we&#8217;re not taking anything from them. We&#8217;re aligned on the interests of the products. And when the product is winning that&#8217;s when we get paid.</p>



<p>[00:35:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So just to be clear on that, in the scenario of a million dollars, so you connect company A with hosting company B. And the deal there was a million dollars. I think you mentioned $250,000 would go where?</p>



<p>[00:36:13] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So that&#8217;s actually a good question. That somewhat depends. And this is a good example of what we&#8217;re working out. So in some situations we might be splitting that with the host who did the deal. And others the host would be on top of that. That somewhat depends on the product type and the category.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s a lot of what work we&#8217;re doing now is figuring out what&#8217;s fair, what makes sense. The guidance is we want to win for all involved, right? But the heart of it is, it&#8217;s like two things. One we&#8217;re incentivising ourselves. We make our money on the successful distribution side, right? So the revenue share is the heart of Guildenberg&#8217;s economic engine.</p>



<p>And two, we&#8217;re directionally going towards that app store. You can imagine the future state where it&#8217;s a straight 15%, right? And that covers the app store costs. And there&#8217;s a split there with the hosting providers who also offer it. So it&#8217;s like I&#8217;ll be flexible along the way to get there and do what makes sense, but I&#8217;m very clear on where we&#8217;re going. Which is going to be this sort of standardized target of 15% across products.</p>



<p>[00:37:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay so in the Apple ecosystem which we had a moment ago, we were talking about that, there was some parallels there. The entire model of the Apple ecosystem really is profit, and dividends to shareholders. That&#8217;s the mantra. So I guess that question has to come next. Is there some alignment there? Is this the model that you&#8217;re going to be promoting?</p>



<p>In other words, if you grow do the coffers of Gildenberg grow? Or is there some reasonable, I don&#8217;t know, churn of those finances giving back to the community, giving back to the WordPress project? How does all of that work? In other words is Guildenberg a for profit? Is it a for profit with benefits to the WordPress community? Is it just a not for profit? What&#8217;s going on?</p>



<p>[00:38:02] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> That&#8217;s a great question. This is another good example of something that I&#8217;m still working out. So let me start with my intentions. One of my motivating pieces behind this, if I could just wave a wand based on how I see things today, acknowledging that they could change and there&#8217;s pieces that I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m missing. My ideal would be to get to where a product is paying 15% for distribution. And 5%, so 33 of that 15, of that revenue is going directly to the project.</p>



<p>In my current thinking we have two organizations if you will. Guildenberg Inc. which is for profit and does the distribution work, and returns dividends to its shareholders. Which can include members, it includes investors, etc. I want to be moving increasingly towards being community owned.</p>



<p>And then you have the .org, if you will, which is basically the member pool. So in my ideal an increasing amount of revenue goes into that pool to then be managed and directed by the members, right?</p>



<p>As one example, let&#8217;s say someone joins the app store in the future. They&#8217;re paying the 15%, they don&#8217;t really care about the project at all. So 5% or 33 of that 15 goes into the member pool on their behalf. And they really have no say over what it. So it&#8217;s directed by the members into projects, into initiatives and .org that matter to them.</p>



<p>Now, if that member, that product, decides that they do care they can then join the guild and now they have a say over where their funds go. They might say oh I care more about this initiative over here. So that&#8217;s the high level idea. Part of what set me out, what I set out to do here is like, how do we solve an incentives problem across the space?</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t want people to do Five For The Future just because they love WordPress. I want there to be an economic incentive behind it. And to me, what I&#8217;m intrigued by, what I&#8217;m working towards is, how do you just build that into this App Store model?</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s the direction. I don&#8217;t know how we get there. I suspect that you have the for profit piece and then a separate organization for the member pool. I don&#8217;t know and people have ideas, I want to hear them. I&#8217;ve had a number of inputs already. We don&#8217;t have to solve that problem today. We&#8217;re working on just getting the economic engine up and running, but that&#8217;s the stuff that I find especially motivating.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s been a big piece of this. How do we create incentives that provide funding that the project needs to work on the things that might not get the attention otherwise?</p>



<p>[00:40:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You said something a moment ago which, I&#8217;ve got to say, I&#8217;m not entirely sure I understood it. Because you implied that you could opt out say of the Five For The Future piece if you weren&#8217;t a part of the guild, or if you hadn&#8217;t joined the guild. But the implication would have been that you were still part of the App Store, let&#8217;s call it that. So have I misunderstood? Can you be somebody who can have a plugin on the Guildenberg marketplace but not be a part of the guild?</p>



<p>[00:40:56] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Yes. The idea is, so at least in my current thinking, what would happen is that if you just join the app store, it&#8217;s like a level one, there&#8217;s requirements and standards to do that. But you don&#8217;t have to be active in the community and be participating and kind of doing all this stuff.</p>



<p>You can join for just the pure business incentives. As long as you play by the rules you&#8217;re in, right? Because it&#8217;s merit based, it&#8217;s based on your behavior. As long as you&#8217;re playing by the rules, you&#8217;re in. And my thinking, so at that level, you don&#8217;t care where your 15% goes to.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re going to spend it on your behalf on the project, we&#8217;ll direct the funds. And the idea is that a year later you&#8217;re like hey this WordPress community is quite cool. You discover that the guild is something that you can join and you apply to do so, the members accept you. Then at that point, that 5% of the 15, the funds that have been allocated on your behalf automatically, you could now have a say over where they go. That&#8217;s the idea. Does that make sense?</p>



<p>[00:41:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s cleared that up. Yeah thank you. That makes sense. Now you said the word behavior there, which is kind of interesting. Let&#8217;s extrapolate that because if we run that forwards, you can imagine a nightmare scenario where there is just this cabal of people who have control over the behavior.</p>



<p>What the behavior is that&#8217;s appropriate to be in and out of this community. And you can imagine a scenario in, let&#8217;s say that in 10 years from now Guildenberg is monstrously successful. Almost everybody&#8217;s going there to inquire about premium plugins and what have you. And yet we have gatekeepers of behavior and all of that.</p>



<p>So I want to address that. Almost every part of human history shows that given power things start to go a little bit pear shaped. And maybe the incentives that were there at the beginning of the project are not the incentives that approach when money is involved, or you&#8217;re becoming successful, or you sense that somebody else has an idea which conflicts with you.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s just get into that. Who moderates the behavior? Who creates that charter? And how do we ensure that this cabal doesn&#8217;t occur?</p>



<p>[00:43:07] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Okay so there are two threads here that we have to look at. First, why behavior, and then second, how do you do the governance piece? It&#8217;s basically what we&#8217;re touching on, right?</p>



<p>Oh I love this stuff. So first one of the challenges when I was looking at the history of guilds is that because of human nature I&#8217;d argue, we tend towards exclusivity. We want to work with people like us, that look like us, talk like us, whatever the reasons are, right?</p>



<p>And so this is just like how we tend. So while there were a lot of good things that guilds did, they were also highly exclusionary at times, right? Where it just sort of propagated and just made even more prevalent some of the challenges that we recognize today of inclusivity and diversity, right?</p>



<p>So I feel like we can&#8217;t trust ourselves because we&#8217;re going to tend by default to just attract people that are like us. Which I&#8217;d argue is not good for the ecosystem as a whole. So in sorting through that for a while, it&#8217;s like well okay then what can you use? What becomes the basis?</p>



<p>And the only thing that stands out to me as fair is behavior. So it doesn&#8217;t matter where you&#8217;re from, what you look like etc. If you abide by the same rules. And so let&#8217;s start with this. It feels to me like the right idea in principle. The question becomes, how do you practice it?</p>



<p>[00:44:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The devil is in the detail here, isn&#8217;t it.</p>



<p>[00:44:26] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> But you got to get that right first, right? So it&#8217;s like okay we can say behavior. Now there&#8217;s a couple of things we have to work with. We have our core values in WordPress. Andrea Middleton did a fantastic talk on this a couple of years ago. And there are a few things that stand out. Someone didn&#8217;t make a list somewhere these are just what we practice. And she did the work sorting through them.</p>



<p>We have this concept of autonomy. We value in WordPress doing what we want and we respect the freedom of others to do the same right?</p>



<p>We also have this concept of like a duocracy, like you get credit for doing. We care about utility, making stuff that works, that solves problems. We&#8217;re generally skeptical as a community. This conversation is a great example of it, right? We ask why, and we keep asking. And then quite importantly, we do a good job at our core of giving credit where credit&#8217;s due, right?</p>



<p>And so there&#8217;s a lot here Nathan to be figured out but I&#8217;ll just kind of give you one example. One of the behaviors that I would expect members to adhere to is, let&#8217;s take that last one, giving credit where credit is due. This is GPL, right? So on the one hand, you&#8217;re free to take someone else&#8217;s work, change the name on it and resell it as your own. You&#8217;re legally free to do that. And I respect your choice and freedom to do that anytime that you want to.</p>



<p>But in terms of who I want to work with, I wouldn&#8217;t want to work with someone who doesn&#8217;t give the credit to the person who originally did that. They&#8217;re legally not obligated to do so, right?</p>



<p>You can just kind of do whatever you want, it&#8217;s GPL. But when I think about the behavior that I would want to build around it&#8217;s like hey yeah I copied someone else&#8217;s work and I gave them credit for doing so and built on that.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s one example of a behavior where I would want people in who are happy to give the credit where it&#8217;s due to those that they worked with. And if you made a mistake, oh wow yeah I forgot to give attribution there. No problem. Let&#8217;s fix that. And they prioritize that because that&#8217;s one of the things that we value.</p>



<p>[00:46:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess the other piece there would be the cabal piece as I mentioned, you know, just idea that you would have people who had been there from the very beginning. You can see how this works. It all boils down really to the word governance I think.</p>



<p>Who&#8217;s governing and what gives them the right to stay in that position? And who ultimately would be the person to say well you&#8217;re right at the top of this pyramid here? But your behavior isn&#8217;t living up to the code therefore you&#8217;re going to have to think about either modifying your behavior or going elsewhere. That&#8217;s a difficult thing to do because they&#8217;re the people that are governing, if you like, and yet you&#8217;re wanting them to adapt their behavior.</p>



<p>[00:47:06] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Okay so let&#8217;s talk about that. So again, that&#8217;s another one, lots to figure out there. But my guiding point, my starting point here, Leslie Sims pointed me to Elinor Ostrom&#8217;s book, Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. It&#8217;s a fascinating book. I highly recommend it.</p>



<p>And it goes back and looks at the history of commons. And contrary to what people think there are groups who&#8217;ve successfully self governed for as long as a thousand years over scarce fixed resources. And what Ostrom does in her work here is she looks at all the data and breaks it down. Figures out what&#8217;s working, what doesn&#8217;t. And she came up with eight design principles for what she calls a common pool resource.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;ve still yet to figure this out. But in my mind part of the key here is you have the commercial interest like the Guildenberg .com, right, if you will? And then you have this member pool which is like that Five For The Future type resource.</p>



<p>And the key there is that over time we want that to become the biggest thing, right? If the .com interests are successful we&#8217;re slowly but surely making the guild more and more powerful, if you will, by it having more and more resources. Every new product that comes in, that is growing.</p>



<p>So then it comes down to okay how do we then govern that growing pool of resources? And this is where Ostrom&#8217;s work comes in. She has eight principles for self governance in a commons scenario. And there are a couple of different pieces to it.</p>



<p>The first one is this idea of having clear boundaries. So there&#8217;s a very clear definition of what it means to be a member. This is where the behavior standards come in. You need to make sure that those make sense for the ecosystem that you&#8217;re in. They need to hold up to scrutiny. You need to make sure that the members themselves can modify the rules. That&#8217;s the key piece here, right?</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s a number of things that you have to think through. It&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s tricky, and a lot of it is this idea of you&#8217;ve creating an environment where there&#8217;s intended to be a healthy tension. And that&#8217;s part of how you prevent capture, right? So it&#8217;s not trivial.</p>



<p>But we have plenty of examples of how people have done this in the past. And the heart of my interest and what I&#8217;m moving towards is like okay let&#8217;s take what&#8217;s already been established here, let&#8217;s combine some of these ideas. The construct of a guild but then adding in the concept of a member, a resource pool, that is governed by the members. Which is something that guilds often didn&#8217;t do. It tended to be kind of arbitrary but they had some of these pieces.</p>



<p>So yeah there&#8217;s a lot of work to be done there. I feel directionally clear and the focus right now is on the economic engine. But as time goes on what I&#8217;m excited about is drawing in people who have a lot more experience than I do to take some of these ideas and break them down.</p>



<p>I know that we&#8217;ll make mistakes and my intention is that by staying focused on aligning incentives we&#8217;re giving ourselves a reason to learn from those mistakes and make it better. Yeah I at least feel confident in the direction where it&#8217;s all going.</p>



<p>[00:50:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So you&#8217;re working on the distribution piece at the moment. It in a sense is the underpinnings of the monetisation and the compatibility pieces. They&#8217;re going to grow hopefully out of all of the distribution model that you&#8217;re working on.</p>



<p>Okay so you&#8217;re a year and a half in. This is the final question I&#8217;ve got for you. Do you have cause to be optimistic? Having had 18 months of playing around with this and obviously bringing some people on board. Do you have optimism? Does this still seem like it&#8217;s a long way off? Or do you feel that there&#8217;s legs to this? And two years from now we might be having a more in depth conversation about something that&#8217;s moved forward.</p>



<p>[00:50:47] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> So I&#8217;m optimistic by nature. What&#8217;s been interesting to me about this is that I&#8217;ve tried somewhat hard over the years to kind of convince myself out of doing this. And Nathan after a year and a half of effectively full time on this, if I knew how hard it was going to be I probably would have tried harder to convince myself to not do it.</p>



<p>So hey I&#8217;m optimistic as a visionary. And I&#8217;ve been cautious about this. But the main reason that we are where we are and we have had significant traction is that at every turn I&#8217;ve either had yeses or affirmation of direction, or we&#8217;ve identified an obstacle that has offered an opportunity to clarify which has then led to a yes.</p>



<p>So my core focus has been talking with product companies and with hosting companies. And in those conversations I&#8217;ve just continued to get clearer and clearer on the problem sets and where the incentives are and what&#8217;s motivating. And I&#8217;ve either had explicit like, yes we want to be a part of this or, yes if you solve that of course we want to, like, let&#8217;s talk again.</p>



<p>And so it&#8217;s been a curious tension for me where it&#8217;s really hard because you&#8217;re tackling a lot of pieces at once. There&#8217;s a lot of moving parts. But it&#8217;s also easy in the sense that what we&#8217;re really just trying to do is create incentives to solve these problems that people recognize exist.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m happy with the progress. A lot of it&#8217;s been around like for me, one of my marks or my indicators is what am I hearing when I go to a WordCamp, right? I was starting some of these conversations about a year ago at WordCamp Europe. And if I look at what was happening then which was encouraging and optimistic, encouraged my optimism then versus now, it&#8217;s all just dialed up.</p>



<p>And now I&#8217;m having conversations with investors about giving us more capital to grow more quickly. And those are also going well. So we&#8217;ll see. We&#8217;ll see what happens but I&#8217;m encouraged. And this is one where as much as I believe in it, I&#8217;ve tried pretty hard to convince myself to like go do something easier.</p>



<p>And it just kept coming back. And my co founders are also encouraged that they don&#8217;t share my optimism. And so when I talked to Anna or Matt about this and they&#8217;re really like okay this is good. We&#8217;re seeing pieces of the puzzle sort of come together and they&#8217;re encouraged. I&#8217;m like okay well, then that&#8217;s another indicator that we&#8217;re going the right direction.</p>



<p>And what&#8217;s going to really matter though, what it all boils down to, is are we able to successfully help these products get distribution? And can we do that at scale? I&#8217;ve done it for individual products. We&#8217;re seeing good early signs, it does take time. And that&#8217;s going to be the proof, right? Can we have a meaningful impact on these products?</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s what all of our focus is on right now. I&#8217;m encouraged with what I&#8217;m seeing. And I think what you&#8217;ll see over the next year or two is that becoming a lot more public. And what I want to see happen out of this is to take the things that work and open source them. Make it available for folks. There&#8217;s no benefit because we have this clear overall guidance to grow and improve the ecosystem. We&#8217;re not trying to keep it to ourselves.</p>



<p>[00:53:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It certainly will be worth listening back to this in a year&#8217;s time and see where you are. Obviously from my point of view, I hope it goes well. Fingers crossed that it&#8217;s going to all pan out for you. If somebody has listened to this and I would imagine probably they are a product maker will be most interested to get in touch with you because they&#8217;ve got things that they want to discuss with you. What are the best places for us to find you?</p>



<p>[00:54:16] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Just reach out to me through the Guildenberg website, guildenberg.com, jonathan@guildenberg.com. Or find me at a WordCamp. I&#8217;ll be at WordCamp US. Looking forward to WordCamp Asia next year, WordCamp Europe, and I&#8217;m going to start going out to some of the regional ones as well.</p>



<p>[00:54:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Jonathan Wold, thank you for chatting to me today on the podcast.</p>



<p>[00:54:34] <strong>Jonathan Wold:</strong> Thanks for having me, Nathan.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://jonathanwold.com/">Jonathan Wold</a>.</p>



<p>Jonathan has been deeply involved in the WordPress community for almost two decades. He began writing tutorials and freelancing, which eventually led him to the agency world where he worked on large enterprise projects. In the past five to six years, Jonathan has shifted his focus to the broader WordPress ecosystem. He’s also had the opportunity to work at WooCommerce and collaborate with the team at Automattic. Despite the demands of his busy career, Jonathan&#8217;s passion for WordPress has only grown stronger over the years.</p>



<p>Jonathan is one of the co-founders of <a href="https://guildenberg.com/">Guildenberg</a>, and in the podcast today we discuss what this project is, and how it aims to revolutionise the WordPress product ecosystem.</p>



<p>We start the conversation by highlighting the importance of behaviour in the WordPress community and the core values that drive the platform; autonomy, meritocracy, utility, and giving credit where credit is due. Jonathan emphasises the significance of giving credit to the original creators of work, even though it may not be legally required.</p>



<p>We move on to talk about how Guildenberg aims to solve some of the key problems faced by WordPress product owners, such as monetisation, compatibility, and distribution. Jonathan envisions a system where product owners pay a fee for distribution of their products, with a portion of that revenue going back to the Gildenberg project. By aligning incentives and providing economic motivations for contributors, Guildenberg seeks to create a sustainable and thriving ecosystem for the open web.</p>



<p>We get into the inspiration behind the name Guildenberg, which combines the ideas of Gutenberg and the guild institutions from mediaeval Europe. We also discuss the team&#8217;s long-term vision of creating an app store for WordPress that spans the majority of installations, offering monetisation options and enforcing compatibility standards.</p>



<p>If you’re a WordPress developer who is keen to find a way to create visibility for your product, this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://guildenberg.com/">Guildenberg website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://jonathanwold.com/a-guild-for-wordpress-product-businesses/">Jonathan&#8217;s article &#8211; A Guild for WordPress Product Businesses</a></p>



<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/ElinorOstromGoverningTheCommons">Elinor Ostrom&#8217;s book, Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2019/10/31/andrea-middleton-will-what-got-us-here-get-us-there-wordpress-community-at-scale/">Andrea Middleton: Will What Got Us Here, Get Us There? WordPress Community at Scale</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, 16 Aug 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:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:164:"Post Status: Translations Across the Project • Admin Design • New Blocks Page • Working Group on Organizations Supporting WordPress • Contributor Mentorship";s: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=150145";s: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:159:"https://poststatus.com/translations-across-the-project-admin-design-new-blocks-page-working-group-on-organizations-supporting-wordpress-contributor-mentorship/";s: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:19788:"<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-april-3-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (August 7, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">With just a few days before Community Summit, Contributor Day, and WordCamp US, many initiatives across the project are gearing up for time well-spent together. Docs, Training, and several other teams are joining together to work on translations and localizations in a way that supports Gutenberg Phase 4 Multilingual.The Design team is working on the&hellip; </p></div>


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<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box150145_a5ac79-bb"><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_globe-asia kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">Translations, Dashboard Redesign, Blocks page, Supporting Orgs, Mentorship</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4ac.png" alt="💬" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/08/15/discussion-for-a-proposal-for-wp-org-content-translation-and-localization/">Discussion for a proposal for WP.org content translation and localization</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a8.png" alt="🎨" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/08/10/admin-design-kickoff/">Admin Design Kickoff</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f195.png" alt="🆕" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/11/introducing-wordpress-org-blocks/">Introducing WordPress.org/blocks</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f44d-1f3ff.png" alt="👍🏿" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/09/organizations-supporting-wordpress-org/">Organizations Supporting WordPress.org</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9d1-1f3fc-200d-1f3eb.png" alt="🧑🏼‍🏫" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/08/11/the-inaugural-cohort-of-the-wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program-has-concluded/">The Inaugural Cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program has Concluded</a></p></div></div></div>



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<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-150145_050cc2-2e"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-2 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
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<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://jeanbaptisteaudras.com/2023/08/contribution-stats-for-wordpress-6-3-lionel/">Contribution Stats for WordPress 6.3 « Lionel »</a></blockquote>
</div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.4</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/18/wordpress-6-4-whats-on-your-wishlist/">WordPress 6.4: What’s on your wishlist?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/05/wordpress-6-4-development-cycle/">WordPress 6.4 Development Cycle</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>



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<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/08/16/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-august-17th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/">Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | August 17th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/08/14/wcus-2023-community-team-event-at-contributor-day/">WCUS 2023: Community Team event at Contributor Day</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/08/09/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-amer-emea-on-august-9-2023/">Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) AMER/EMEA on August 9, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/16/a-week-in-core-august-14-2023/">Two Weeks in Core – August 14, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/15/status-update-on-the-interactivity-api/">Status update on the Interactivity API</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Phase 3 Ideations</h3>



<ul>
<li><a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Real-Time Collaboration</a></li>



<li><a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Workflows</a></li>



<li><a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/revisions/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Revisions</a></li>



<li><a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Media Library</a></li>



<li><a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/10/block-library/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Block Library</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/12/admin-design/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Admin Design</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/08/10/admin-design-kickoff/">Admin Design Kickoff</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/08/whats-new-for-developers-august-2023/">What’s new for developers? (August 2023)</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/15/dev-chat-agenda-august-16-2023/">Dev Chat agenda, August 16, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/14/editor-chat-agenda-16-august-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: 16 August 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/08/14/design-share-jul-31-aug-11/">Design Share: Jul 31-Aug 11</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/08/10/admin-design-kickoff/">Admin Design Kickoff</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/08/15/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-meeting-august-15-2023/">Agenda for Docs Team bi-weekly meeting August 15, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/14/documentation-team-update-august-14-2023/">Documentation Team Update – August 14, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/08/16/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-8-16-2023/">Hosting Team Meeting Agenda 8-16-2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/07/26/wordpress-hosting-survey/">WordPress Hosting Survey</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/07/10/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-4-july-2023/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, 4 July 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/14/marketing-team-update-the-first-half-of-2023/">Marketing Team Update: The first half of 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/11/introducing-wordpress-org-blocks/">Introducing WordPress.org/blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/09/organizations-supporting-wordpress-org/">Organizations Supporting WordPress.org</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/03/matrix-chat-summary-august/">Matrix chat Summary – August 3, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/08/mobile-team-update-august-8th/">Mobile Team Update – August 8th</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/08/07/last-week-openverse-2023-07-31-2023-08-07/">A week in Openverse: 2023-07-31 – 2023-08-07</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/07/28/openverse-monthly-priorities-meeting-2023-08-02/">Openverse Monthly Priorities Meeting 2023-08-02</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/15/performance-chat-summary-15-august-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 15 August 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/14/plugin-review-team-14-august-2023/">Plugin Review Team: 14 August 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/08/16/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-august-16-2023-1300-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – August 16, 2023 (13:00 UTC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/08/15/discussion-for-a-proposal-for-wp-org-content-translation-and-localization/">Discussion for a proposal for WP.org content translation and localization</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/08/11/the-inaugural-cohort-of-the-wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program-has-concluded/">The Inaugural Cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program has Concluded</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/sustainability/2023/07/28/sustainability-chat-summary-july-28-2023/">Sustainability Chat Summary, July 28, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/08/15/test-team-reps-call-for-nominations-3/">Test Team Reps: Call for Nominations</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/08/15/test-team-at-wcus-2023/">Test Team at WCUS 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/14/test-team-update-14-august-2023/">Test Team Update: 14 August 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/08/11/blue-note-the-second-community-theme-is-released/">Blue Note: The second community theme is released</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/08/15/themes-team-update-august-15-2023/">Themes team update August 15, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/08/04/wcus-contributor-day-tutorials-workshop-in-person-remote/">WCUS Contributor Day: Tutorials Workshop (In-Person &amp; Remote)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/08/03/introducing-the-training-team-guide-program/">Introducing the Training Team Guide Program!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/08/02/announcing-the-first-learn-wordpress-course-cohort/">Announcing the first Learn WordPress Course Cohort.</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/08/14/training-team-meeting-recap-8th-august-2023/">Training Team Meeting Recap – 8th August 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/embedding-media-and-third-party-content-on-your-website/">Embedding media and third-party content on your website</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/testing-your-plugins-for-php-version-compatibility/">Testing your plugins for PHP version compatibility</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=https-www-meetup-com-learn-wordpress-online-workshops-events-295453051">The Wide World of WordPress Events</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=contributing-to-the-learn-wordpress-platform-part-1">Contributing to the Learn WordPress platform – part 1</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=whats-new-for-developers-august-2023">What’s new for developers? (August 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-sendig-block-theme-12">WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=training-team-contributor-hour">Training Team Contributor Hour</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=website-auditing-and-conversion-optimization">Website auditing and conversion optimization</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wordpress-database-optimization-and-maintenance">WordPress database optimization and maintenance</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-contact-page">Creating a contact page</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/developing-with-the-wordpress-rest-api/">Introduction to developing with the WordPress REST API</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/tv">WordPress TV</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/tv/2023/06/15/enhancing-slide-management-for-video-publications/">Enhancing Slide Management for Video Publications</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://blog.jquery.com/2023/05/11/jquery-3-7-0-released-staying-in-order/">jQuery 3.7.0</a></li>



<li><a href="https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v20.2.0">Node v20.2.0 released</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-07-06-1">PHP 8.3.0 Alpha 3 available for testing</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-05-11-1"></a><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-07-06-2">PHP 8.2.8 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-07-06-3">PHP 8.1.21 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/releases/tag/v6.8.0">PHPMailer 6.8.0</a></li>



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



<li><a href="http://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.8">Composer 2.5.8</a></li>
</ul>



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



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<p 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:"Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:25:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WPTavern: WordPress.org Adds New Page to Explain Blocks";s: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=147861";s: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:66:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-adds-new-page-to-explain-blocks";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4226:"<p>What are blocks? WordPress has added a new resource to its website at <a href="https://wordpress.org/blocks/">wordpress.org/blocks</a> that attempts to explain blocks visually with simple language. The landing page is aimed at those who are new to the block paradigm or those who may not yet fully understand blocks&#8217; ease of use and powerful features.</p>



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



<img width="2224" height="1200" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Screen-Shot-2023-08-15-at-9.25.01-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147867" />



<p>Automattic-sponsored core contributor Anne McCarthy <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/11/introducing-wordpress-org-blocks/">announced</a> the new page on WordPress.org with a request for feedback, as this is the first iteration. The project was born out of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-main-2022/issues/245">ticket</a> on GitHub which outlines the need for more effective block marketing:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Currently, there isn&#8217;t a page on wordpress.org that explains in a compelling way what &#8216;Blocks&#8217; are or markets it very effectively on the website. We have a <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/blocks/">filter</a> in the plugin directory, which is useful, but that page is lacking the context of what blocks are, what the block editor is, and why it is so exciting. There are other pages, such as the <a href="https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/wordpress-block-editor/">documentation</a>, that explains what the block editor is, but IMO it&#8217;s a bit wordy and explains how to use the editor, but not necessarily <em>why</em> you should use the editor and why it is unique and exciting.</p>
<cite>WordPress.org GitHub Repository issue: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-main-2022/issues/245">Create &#8216;Blocks&#8217; Landing Page #245</a> &#8211; created by Ben Greeley</cite></blockquote>



<p>One important consideration for contributors working on this project is the overlap with <a href="http://wordpress.org/gutenberg">wordpress.org/gutenberg</a>. The Blocks page is more of a static brochure style introduction, whereas the Gutenberg page is a fully interactive demo that offers an overview of how the editor works. Although they are similar resources, they both have distinct purposes. </p>



<p>McCarthy created a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-main-2022/issues/318">tracking issue</a> for the first iteration of this page, which functions as a mini roadmap for future improvements based on feedback she has already received. More accessibility improvements are coming in future versions, along with some sort of visual that will concisely demonstrate the connection between blocks, patterns, and themes. Contributors are also considering integrating WP Sandbox to make it possible to see blocks in action.</p>



<p>&#8220;This is intended to be a starting point and not a final destination,&#8221; McCarthy said. &#8220;Your feedback is welcomed and needed to get to the next iteration.&#8221; </p>



<p>The blocks page is one area of contribution where even people who are brand new to blocks could help to make the content more compelling and less confusing by leaving feedback on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/08/11/introducing-wordpress-org-blocks/">post</a>.</p>



<p>Blocks are something many casual WordPress users may still be trying to wrap their heads around, not to mention how they impact the ecosystem of plugins and themes. The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/">Classic Editor</a> plugin, which insulates users from the world of blocks, remains one of the most popular plugins with more than 5 million users. Its continued support is not guaranteed forever, especially as WordPress looks to <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-kicks-off-admin-design-overhaul-with-discussion-on-initial-mockups">revamp the admin design</a> to be more similar to the block editor. This landing page&#8217;s marketing for blocks offers a safe entry point for those who are curious about the block editor and want to explore more resources.</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, 16 Aug 2023 03:40:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"Do The Woo Community: Diving Into the WordPress Community with Jorge Casals";s: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=75981";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"https://dothewoo.io/diving-into-the-wordpress-community-with-jorge-casals/";s: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:437:"<p>From his earlier experiences to an active WordPress community member, Jorge shares his journey and building products for WooCommerce.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/diving-into-the-wordpress-community-with-jorge-casals/">Diving Into the WordPress Community with Jorge Casals</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, 15 Aug 2023 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"WPTavern: Crocoblock to Host WordPress Web Agency AI Summit, September 28-30, 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=147593";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"https://wptavern.com/crocoblock-to-host-wordpress-web-agency-ai-summit-september-28-30-2023";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:1510:"<p><a href="https://crocoblock.com/">Crocoblock</a>, a Ukraine-based company with <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/crocoblock/">plugins on WordPress.org</a> as well as commercial products, is hosting a <a href="https://crocoblock.com/wordpress-web-agency-ai-summit/">WordPress Web Agency AI Summit</a> event on September 28-30, 2023. The company has a community of more than <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/CrocoblockCommunity">24K+ freelancers and web agencies on Facebook</a> and is moving to organize its first large virtual event that will be free for all attendees.</p>



<p>The summit will cover practical use cases for AI in development, marketing, design, web agency management, and freelance services. It will include mixed formats, including case studies, workshops, and live panel discussions with Q&amp;A.</p>



<p>Over the course of three days, speakers will give presentations in English from 10am &#8211; 2pm EST. The schedule features 10 speakers with commercial experience and proven success at applying AI to build WordPress sites. They will cover topics like how to build a search engine for a website using AI, AI tools for daily tasks, AI and accessibility, AI translations, and more.</p>



<p>If you are interested to learn more about AI&#8217;s impact on the WordPress ecosystem and how to apply it to agency work, add the event to your calendar and <a href="https://crocoblock.com/wordpress-web-agency-ai-summit/">sign up for free</a> on the Crocoblock website.</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, 15 Aug 2023 02:14:19 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"WPTavern: WordPress Themes Team Releases Blue Note, A Community-Supported Theme for Bloggers";s: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=147784";s: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-themes-team-releases-blue-note-a-community-supported-theme-for-bloggers";s: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:2617:"<p>WordPress&#8217; Themes team launched its <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-proposes-community-themes-initiative">Community Themes initiative</a> earlier this year with the goal of bringing together contributors to build block themes year round, the same way that default themes are built and officially supported. Their first theme release was <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-releases-stacks-a-community-theme-for-building-slide-decks">Stacks</a>, a single-purpose theme for creating slide decks that can be used for a presentation.</p>



<p>The team has now <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/08/11/blue-note-the-second-community-theme-is-released/">released</a> its second community theme called Blue Note, inspired by American jazz record label “<a href="https://www.bluenote.com/">Blue Note Records</a>.&#8221; It&#8217;s more versatile than Stacks, as it can be used for writing/blogging, a personal website, portfolio, nonprofit, memorial, event, or other types of landing pages.</p>



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



<img width="1144" height="858" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/blue-note-screenshot.webp" alt="" class="wp-image-147821" />



<p>Although Blue Note does not package any style variations, it comes with 14 beautifully designed patterns inspired by jazz record covers. The patterns enable users to quickly add images with text or quotes with multiple designs for each. There are also patterns with striped images, an artful way to break up a single image, paired with text. Users can select from multiple headers and footers, among seven page templates and four template parts.</p>



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



<img width="2852" height="1290" src="https://149611589.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Screen-Shot-2023-08-14-at-1.25.50-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-147826" />



<p>Blue Note was designed by Automattic-sponsored contributor Beatriz Fialho, inspired by her work on the State of the Word slides in 2020. It was developed during the WCEU contributor day with the help of more than a dozen <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/community-themes/blob/trunk/blue-note/CREDITS.md">contributors</a>.  The <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/community-themes/">Community Themes GitHub repository</a> has other themes they are working on which are in various stages of development. </p>



<p>Check out <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/blue-note/">Blue Note</a> on WordPress.org and download it for free via the Themes browser inside the admin. </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, 14 Aug 2023 21:09:04 +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:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Do The Woo Community: A DevChat on WooCommerce Support with Andrew Wikel";s: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=70794";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://dothewoo.io/a-devchat-on-woocommerce-support/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:408:"<p>Andrew Wikel shares thoughts and insights working on WooCommerce support specifically for builders and developers of Woo shops. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/a-devchat-on-woocommerce-support/">A DevChat on WooCommerce Support with Andrew Wikel</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:"Sun, 13 Aug 2023 14:45:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"Do The Woo Community: WooCommerce Developer Life Snippets";s: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=71199";s: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:56:"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-developer-life-snippets/";s: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:389:"<p>With every developer we have a conversation with, there is a story. Woo DevLife brings those short stories to the reader.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-developer-life-snippets/">WooCommerce Developer Life Snippets</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:"Sun, 13 Aug 2023 14:30:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:48:"WpOrg\Requests\Utility\CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Tue, 29 Aug 2023 06:10:31 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Tue, 29 Aug 2023 06:00:37 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:4:"gzip";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 2";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20211221060300";}