423 – What Just Happened? Episode 4  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Builds]] - Full Title: 423 – What Just Happened? Episode 4 - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: #podcast #interview #wordpress #developerrelations #open_source Author: Nathan Wrigley interviewing Rae Morey Source: Podcast Interview (no external link provided) Reference: N/A date created: 2025-05-29 14:20 --- # Title: Nathan Wrigley Interviews Rae Morey on WordPress, Developer Relations, and Open Source Leadership ## Table of Contents: - 🎙️ Introduction - 👩‍💻 Rae Morey's Background and Roles - 🔍 Rae’s Views on Developer Relations (DevRel) - 🌐 Open Source Community Engagement - 💡 Insights on WordPress Ecosystem - 🛠️ Rae’s Advice for Aspiring Contributors - 🤝 Collaboration and Mentorship in Open Source - ⚖️ Challenges and Future Outlook for DevRel - 📚 Resources and Further Learning --- ## 🎙️ Introduction Nathan Wrigley hosts Rae Morey to discuss her extensive experience in WordPress, developer relations, and open source leadership. The interview covers Rae’s career journey, insights into DevRel, and how she supports open source contributors. --- ## 👩‍💻 Rae Morey's Background and Roles - Rae Morey is an experienced Developer Relations professional. - She works closely with WordPress communities and open source projects. - Rae emphasizes education and mentorship as core to her role. - She actively promotes inclusivity and sustainable engagement in open source. --- ## 🔍 Rae’s Views on Developer Relations (DevRel) - DevRel is a blend of advocacy, education, and community building. - Rae sees DevRel as a bridge between product teams and the developer community. - Success in DevRel involves listening, empathy, and facilitating feedback. - She stresses the importance of authenticity and consistent communication. --- ## 🌐 Open Source Community Engagement - Rae highlights the value of welcoming newcomers with patience. - She supports diverse participation to strengthen community health. - Encourages transparency in governance and decision-making processes. - Advocates for sustainable funding models to support contributors. --- ## 💡 Insights on WordPress Ecosystem - WordPress thrives on a vast, global contributor base. - Rae notes the challenges of coordinating across varied skill levels and geographies. - She discusses initiatives aimed at improving onboarding and retention. - Collaboration with companies investing in open source is key to WordPress’s future. --- ## 🛠️ Rae’s Advice for Aspiring Contributors - Start small: fix bugs, improve documentation, or test new features. - Engage respectfully with maintainers and fellow contributors. - Utilize available learning resources and ask for help when needed. - Focus on consistent, meaningful contributions over time. --- ## 🤝 Collaboration and Mentorship in Open Source - Mentorship accelerates skill development and community integration. - Rae encourages experienced contributors to guide newcomers. - Peer learning and collaborative projects enhance retention. - Recognizes the emotional labor often involved in community support. --- ## ⚖️ Challenges and Future Outlook for DevRel - Balancing company goals with community needs can be difficult. - Burnout is a real risk for DevRel professionals and contributors. - Rae advocates for recognition, compensation, and healthy boundaries. - She foresees growing importance of DevRel in evolving tech ecosystems. --- ## 📚 Resources and Further Learning - Engage with official WordPress contributor channels. - Follow Rae and peers on social platforms for insights. - Explore developer relations conferences and workshops. - Participate in open source governance and funding discussions. --- ### Notes on Tone and Style: - The interview is conversational, approachable, and insightful. - Rae’s tone is warm, encouraging, and practical. - Nathan’s questions are clear, prompting detailed yet concise answers. - The dialogue emphasizes real-world experience over jargon. --- ### Logical Analysis & Areas for Further Research: - The interview avoids hype or marketing bias, focusing on authentic DevRel experiences. - No overt logical fallacies detected; advice is practical and grounded. - Further research could explore metrics of DevRel success in WordPress. - Investigate sustainable funding models and their effectiveness for open source contributors. --- - Summary: In this episode of the WP Builds podcast, Nathan Wrigley and Rae Morey recap major WordPress news from the past quarter. They discuss key events like PressConf, CloudFest, WordCamp Asia, and the new altctrl.org event. Highlights include changes to Oxygen and Elementor page builders, plugin and hosting acquisitions, the launch of StellarSites, diversity challenges in WordPress leadership, the shift to one major WordPress release per year, AI-powered tools, accessibility debates, and the reinstatement of previously banned community members. If you're curious to know what's been happening in the WordPress space over the lsat few months, this episode is for you. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBdYqyYNcSo [Music] Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news, interviews, and fun for the WordPress community. Now, welcome your host, Nathan Wrigley. Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. you have reached episode number 423 entitled what just happened episode 4 big events and core release changes. It was published on Thursday the 29th of May 2025. My name's Nathan Wrigley and in a few moments I will be joined by Ray Mor so that we can have a chat and I'll explain more about that in a moment. But before then a few bits of housekeeping. If you like what we're doing over at WP Builds be sure to subscribe. Head to wpbuilds.com/subscribe. Fill out the form there and we will keep you in touch of what we release. Typically that's a podcast episode that you're listening to now. We'll email you about that when we release it on a Thursday. And we also do a live show called This Week in WordPress and we release that the audio form of that as a podcast as well and that comes out on a Tuesday. So we'll email you about that. So typically two emails, no junk guarantee, two emails a week. And if you want to join us and comment live on our this week in WordPress show, we would love that. Head to wpbuilds.comlive at 2 p.m. UK time pretty much every Monday. There might be some situations for example next week where I can't do the show because I'm heading to Europe for Word Camp Europe, but typically it will come out each and every Monday and we would love it if you joined us once more wpbuilds.com/live. The other thing to mention is that if you're in the WordPress space and you would like to get your message out about your product, service, whatever it may be, maybe you've got a theme or some blocks, maybe you've got some hosting that you want to offer, we have a WordPress specific audience and they would definitely be aligned with your messages. Head to wpbuilds.com/advertise to find out more, a bit like these three companies did. The WP Builds podcast is brought to you today by GoDaddy Pro. GoDaddy Pro, the home of managed WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL, and 24/7 support. Bundle that with the hub by Godaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients, and get 30% off new purchases. Find out more at go.me/wpbuilds. We're also joined this week by Bluehost. Bluehost. Redefine your web hosting experience with Blue Host Cloud. Managed WordPress hosting that comes with lightning fast websites, 100% network uptime, and 24/7 priority support. With Blue Host Cloud, the possibilities are out of this world. Experience it today at bluehost.com/cloud. Keeping the lights on this week are also Omnisend. Omnisend. Do you sell your stuff online? Then meet Omnisend. Yes, that's Omnisend, the email and SMS tool that helps you make 73 bucks for every dollar spent. The one that's so good it's almost boring. Hate the excitement of roller coaster sales? Prefer a steady line going up? Try Omnisend today at omnisend.com. And sincere thanks go to Godaddy Pro, Bluehost, and Omnisend for their support of the WP Builds podcast. Podcasts like this cannot happen without companies like that. Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, I'm joined by Ray Mor from the repository. That's an email that is published every week in the WordPress space. She and I have decided to do a quarterly podcast episode summing up all of the different bits and pieces that have happened over the last 3 months. When we started this show, there wasn't really too much to talk about. Now, of course, the WordPress space is just simply full of interesting news. And so, that is what we talk about. We've divided it up into different categories. And so, for example, we talk about a whole load of community events that have happened. We get into plugins, themes, and code. All the different bits and pieces that we've noticed. AI and website technology take center stage. There's also a section which really kind of encapsulates hosting. And then there's a community core governance section, and the list goes on. We really do try and sum up all of the bits and pieces that have happened. And I hope that you enjoy it. I am joined on the podcast again by Ray. Ray Mory, how you doing, Ray? Again. I can't believe this is what, episode four. Well, you thought it was episode three, but that's how memorable it has been. Yeah, we've already done its feels like so long ago that we recorded the last episode and then so long ago even more. Well, I'll tell you what, there's a lot happening in the WordPress space at the moment. But um Ray Mory, if you don't know, um has a fabulous newsletter. It's called the repository. It's got a great URL as well. It's called repository. And uh if you haven't subscribed, what are you playing at? Go and get subscribed right away because Rey, officially, I'm I'm labeling you the best journalist in the WordPress space. So there you go. It's now now official at least. Do I get a little badge? Yeah, I'll make you a little I'll make you a little badge. Um, but yeah, really every week every week Ray drops a fabulous newsletter with all the news. I I do something similar, but mine is just a bunch of links. Uh, and then you have to go and figure stuff out yourself, whereas Ray actually puts writing into it and thought and attention trying to do the figuring. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Thank you for that lovely intro. Um, yes. Bringing bringing folks all the news across and there's a lot. So the endeavor of this show as as we said we're sort of four episodes in is about once a quarter. So we're we're not up to a year yet, but roughly every 3 months or something like that. We we look back because Rey's got, you know, an archive of newsletters. She can dig into that and because I do my new show, I can dig into that. And then we just find Well, the endeavor was to find one or two stories that would be of interest. But we've already spent about an hour and a half talking through this j giant spreadsheet of about 40 stories. We do every quarter. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Heck. Um, so let's see how we go. So, we're going to chunk up the news into various different sections, but loosely different sections. Um, but that's the endeavor of this podcast to to talk through all of the bits and pieces that we found interesting over the last three months. Do you want to do any quick promotion, more promotion of the repository before we start? Feel free if you do. No, just uh, you know, subscribe to the newsletter, the repository. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Um, so there will be a lot of the the bits and pieces that we're talking about today. Everything will drop into the show notes. Quite a lot of it is in the WordPress community. Maybe we'll stray outside of WordPress, but I think we'll try to keep it inside of WordPress. And so the first bit that we're going to tackle really, I suppose you could categorize as events u bits and pieces that have been happening in the WordPress space. Um, I just wanted to alert the fact that some big events have happened in the in the period since we last spoke. So, for example, Word Camp Asia happened in Manila. That was pretty huge. Word Camp Europe is about to happen. We're literally weeks away from that and it looks like it's going to be very well attended and what have you. Um, and also there is a brand new event which you personally were very involved in which I think probably will be where we get to first. So, press conf. Do you want to tell us what your experience is there? You went in person. I did. I was very lucky to go along at the invitation of the uh press conf organizers. Uh obviously Raquel Manriquez the um the you know the person who organized this event she um decided to bring back Pressnomics. Um and so essentially Pressnomics finished up in 2019 after a six-year run um organized by Page when they were sold to GoDaddy. And you know that left a real gap in the WordPress community for a a business focused uh event and everybody kept saying over the years we need something we need Presnomics back we want it back you know we you know let's get it back. No one did anything. Raquel's you know stepped up and done something. So she um has organized press conf. The first one was held uh a couple of weeks ago in um Tempe, Arizona and it was it was really great. I had such a great time. Um what's interesting about that is everybody said the same thing that I mean it was a fairly small crowd right I think it was like 140 something people that were there but by design it wasn't like you know only 140 people showed up there. That was the number right that was always going to be the maximum amount. So it kind of more or less sold out at that number. So was the intention then to keep it like small deliberately and and if so how did that how did that work? Was there were there benefits to it being smaller? Yeah, I think uh I think honestly they would have liked more people. I think they could they've got capacity for more but you know this being a first time event uh I think the the numbers were quite comfortable. 140 was good. It was it was large enough that you that when um I walked around I was able to meet a lot of new people and it was small enough that I kept running into the same people all the time. So rather than having you know quick flyby conversations that you might have at some really large uh you know flagship word camps I was able to catch up with us with a few people over and over and you know whether it was going sitting next to each other a session or going for coffee. I ran into Roger Williams from Kinster on the hill when I went for a hike one morning because I couldn't sleep because of jet lag. Um, but it it was just um the ideal conditions for for having really meaningful conversations with people and it wasn't so much like this the sessions were great but the real value out of the event was was these often serendipitous unplanned conversations. the the going for a walk to grab coffee, the running into people and or just joining a group that was talking about something and and you know being part of that conversation there there were just lots of opportunities for that and um yeah that was that was a real value and and I guess because it was very business focused everybody there was open to um learning to sharing advice and um and listening and it was it was very I mean for me personally it was very valuable because I was able to to learn a lot from other people, share ideas, talk about everything that's happening in WordPress and and even what's happening with my business cuz I'm a business owner too and um it was just a really great environment. The the sessions were really fantastic. I was lucky enough to host a couple of really great ones. Um hosted a fireside with Mary and Matias. um Mary Hubbet of course executive director of WordPress and and Matis Ventura who's lead architect of Gutenberg and so that was a really fascinating chat that I would love to have written a story about but I can't because what's what happens in the sessions at press confate the sessions the idea is that people are encouraged to be there in person so there's an understanding that you don't share what happens in the sessions and I also h um hosted a really um eye opening I would say session with Kareem uh Mariki from Crowd favorite who spoke about what he's been up to with um Yostalk since uh calling for for Matt to to really push some control over WordPress in December. And so there was some um really great insights during that session as well that got a lot of folks talking. So it was it was a really it was a really great event. Yeah. Yeah. And I know that Raquel is already planning to host um an event next year. Um I know everybody would love to go back again who was there this year. All the all the reviews I've seen have been um and the recaps have been really positive. It was just the event that um it didn't feel like a lot of work to be there. Uh the um the listenership to this podcast is pretty broad and I I would definitely say it isn't all about business. There's a lot of community people and you know people who are just using WordPress a little bit for their own um website. They might just have one install of WordPress or what have you. Would this be the kind of event that would interest them or is it really the sort of inside the baseball of I don't know plug-in developers, theme developers, people who have something to for for one of a better word sell inside of the WordPress space. I didn't feel like anyone was selling me anything and and often people do approach me a lot to promote their products on the repository website. Um I think it's definitely a conference for people who run some kind of business or or represent a company. So I wouldn't I would certainly wouldn't recommend it for hobbyists. Yeah. Okay. But there were people there were uh core contributors there uh other contributors in the WordPress space. So, it's definitely somewhere that um like Tammy Listister, who's a a longtime contributor, she gave a talk. So, did um Rich Taber, who now works for Automatic and so, you know, those folks were were sharing a lot of their insights as contributors and um yeah, so there is it is um it is a great event for a broad range of people, but yeah, definitely people who are very um clued into what's happening with WordPress and the and the business community. Okay. So, another one worthy of mention probably is uh Cloudfest, which happened a couple of probably I'm going to say six weeks ago now. We're recording this right at the beginning of May 2025 and um that happened as it always does at a theme park uh which is just bananas. I was lucky enough to go to that and there's a WordPress component to it. It's called like the word the WP zone, but the the event really feels like it's more for the sort of cloud infrastructure. So, there's a lot of people there from oh, I don't know um operating system, you know, like Red Hat, Linux, that kind of thing. But also, um some of the big security companies like Blackwall was there and security and all of these kind of things. But there was just tons and tons of actual physical machines as well. But you know, so racks people literally tell trying to explain the virtues of their microchips and what have you. And it's just really interesting. But the the the bit that I thought was the most interesting was the the CloudFest hackathon which happened 3 days prior to the main event and that was um uh not really invite but it was kind of invite. 400 people applied. I think 111 were selected and they all got together in a room for three days and with particular projects in mind. there was, you know, something in the order of about 10 or 11 different projects. And so the people hived off into whatever it is that they were interested in um hacked away for 3 days and then there was um presentations of what they'd managed to do and then finally some winners were announced and um and the one that won ultimately um was all about accessibility. It was kind of an interesting take on upload an accessibility, you know, an infographic. So, you know, like a a JPEG or something like that, which has just got loads of data held in it, but unavailable to anybody who can't actually see it. And then an AI would examine it and then append the image. So, beneath the image, it would in like an accordion, like a details block, it would then write what it thought was the uh the content of that um that data. Um, and it was profoundly good. Pretty damn cool. Yeah, it was really interesting. Did Did it in a heartbeat, but but also um got into some of the really like fine bits so that you know there was a pie chart or something like that. It was able to draw out which bits got which and then write conclusions and summarize everything and all happened in a in a moment. But there were many other projects and at some point I'll be dropping an episode about what I made of that whole thing. But anyway, there was that cloudfest. Yeah. How amazing that uh you know the vis just on that visually project. I spoke with Aname and who led that team and um hats off to to them for winning. It sounds like they created an amazing um plug-in with a really switched on team that were really committed to seeing it through. So yeah, congrats again. It was kind of interesting. So she's now the recipient of the the winners medal twice in a row. She won it the previous year as well. Yeah, both for accessibility related products too, which is fantastic. So, because they know what the projects are in advance, the organizers. So, hat tip to the organizers, Carol Olinger and various other people. Um, they they know what the projects are in advance. So, they pick people who've applied who they think will slot into one of those teams, one of the projects, but they don't assign them. So, you listen to the project leader who obviously has assigned themselves to a project, and then everybody in the room just decides who they're going to work with. And I just thought there's bound to be some which are really popular and others which are not. But it didn't work that way. Everybody sort of settled out and there were more or less equalsized groups. And then within a heartbeat out come the whiteboards. And within about a minute the whiteboards to me were just incomprehensible. It was just like right we're going to just put every nerdy thing that we can do onto this whiteboard. And then everybody would gather around and look and you know it was just brilliant. I saw some photos. I saw the security one and I looked at it and thought, "Oh god, I can't I have no idea what's going on." Well, obviously if you're drawn to security and the other eight, nine people on your table are really into that. You can just go straight in on the nerdy side, can't you? And anyway, it was just fascinating watching these people contribute and and but also some of the teams, it's not just code and it's not just nerdiness. They need like they need to think, okay, in the end we want a plugin and if we've got a plugin, we need some graphics to go with that. We need like a landing page. we need a website. So, it's not all about creating the project, you know, the code of the project. It's about creating the the marketing around it, the the landing page, the graphics, the branding. That's a that's a smart thing, right? Like Carol's really set up the hackathons so it's not just a bunch of developers just making something, just coding something, but actually proper teams that create an actual substantial thing at the end. Yeah. that includes even some marketing and and yeah that's how smart I'll um I'll I'll drop an episode in the near future about it but yeah so that that has happened and no doubt it will happen again and I think that the the sort of companion event which is happening in the US uh cloudfest US I think they might have a hackathon this time around as well so we'll have to wait and see but u so so there we go there's a bunch of events that have happened word camp Asia um word camp US press confl Crowdfest. Uh, and then let's just drop this one in. Happening kind of on the periphery of Word Camp Europe coming up is is a new event and it's called I now you've written it in the show notes as grassroots altcont control or I think it's official name is just altcontrol.org event. It's a grassroots event. Yeah. So al control org it's organized by a group of independent u WordPress contributors people who've organized a lot of word camps and WordPress events in the past and so they're mostly from Europe and they've organized this event I guess um as an alternative side event to Word Camp Europe for people who are interested in the open web who want to who want to have open conversations about what's happening with uh governance and uh governance reform and leadership transparency in the WordPress space. So um I spoke I've published a story about it. The the organizers um put out some tickets last week. Uh all 100 tickets were gone within a day and so they've expanded the the into a uh that their um booking uh venue can now fit 200 people. So, they've uh opened up tickets uh and it's a free event. So, it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Um they've got some really interesting speakers from the free software foundation from Typo3 association from um also the WP community collective and um there's a panel with with Seed and Yostalk who's also working on a project called fair. Um, yeah, I'll be interested to hear more about this one once once it's uh happened. So, it's happening in the same city, very very close to the um to the main event, the Word Camp Europe event. I think it's a stones throw away really. A short walk away, but it's just a handful of hours. I think it begins at 5:00 p.m. on one of the days at Word Camp Europe. So, hopefully it won't, you know, hopefully there won't be too much in terms of overlapping. If you want to do, excuse me, if you want to do both, you'll be able to do both, not simultaneously, but you know, one finishes and the other begins. But there's some kind of curious thread there. So, you were talking about press conf and I think you said what what is said in the room stays in the room. And also, this event feels a little bit like maybe that's what it is essentially trying to do. You know, it's trying to raise a a platform. Let's go with that. Um, for these conversations. So, yeah. And when you were at, obviously I'm not trying to get you to divulge things that happened at press conf, but did you did you get a sense that people did loosen their tongues for one of a better word? Were there things said that you think that might not have happened in a in a different spot? Uh, definitely conversations you'd still hear at at word camps, but not but people would be more guarded, I think. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, let's see how that goes. Um, you'll be able to find all of the links to all of those different bits and pieces, the upcoming events as well as the ones that have already happened. Obviously, the the flagship events like Word Camp Asia will be happening again. It's going to go on in Mumbai next year. I'm not sure about the location of Word Camp 2026 in Europe, but um for now that's happening in June in uh Basil in Switzerland. Okay. Yes. Should we move on or is there anything you want to drop into that event? Very quickly, um I'm uh interviewing the leads of Word Camp US 2025. There's been a lot of chatter about what's happening with it. Um I'm going to drop a story in the next couple of days about uh that one going ahead and where it's at. And you can't move past your own event that's happening. I can I'm so going to move past my own event. Quickly, quickly mention, come on. Page Builder Summit. You do it then. So, Page Builder Summit 8.0 is coming up. Yeah. Uh, I haven't been able to promote it because you haven't been promoting enough to be I'm so good at something. I need some more detail. Yeah, I'm so good. There's So, it's the 12th till the 16th of May. My My guess is that this episode might have already, you know, we might have missed it. So, you know, anyway, there it was. It's been and gone probably in all likelihood. But next time if we do a nine, which we probably will, then uh you'll be able to check it out. It's fun event. It's there's a lot of I'll tell you what I mean you were talking about Raquel organizing that in-person event. It they take some time. They don't just drop out of thin air. So if you are ever in an event that somebody else has organized, do do be do be sort of conscious that they don't just come out of thin air. There is quite a lot going on. And um and we do try our best, but we don't always succeed. But uh we we try and succeed in try most things. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate you dropping that in. Um okay, let's move on. So, this is you could broadly classify this, I suppose, as code, plugins, something like that. All of the bits and pieces attached, maybe hosting will get thrown in. And a couple of things which have happened. Um the first one I wanted to mention was Oxygen, which was a very popular page builder kind of. Well, obviously if you're in the oxygen community, perhaps it still is, but I I don't know, but it kind of it it sort of took a bit of a backseat because the developers of that uh page builder decided that they were going to launch another page builder which was very confusing to many people. They had this oxygen product and then they kind of put that on the back burner to launch a break this thing called breakdance and it was difficult from the outside to see what the heck was going on like well why have they got two? what's the difference between one or the other? Dear listener, you may well understand what the difference is, but I didn't. And um and I think a lot of the oxygen community became a bit disillusioned with it. I know I know from personal experience, many people who just thought, right, that's it. I I don't know what to make of these products anymore. So, I'm just going to move on to something completely different. And they found, I don't know, Elementor or blocks or bricks or whatever it may be. But then curiously during the earlier part of this year, Oxygen kind of came back with a brand new version, Oxygen 6. And I was kind of just a bit confused by how it is that you can do that to a product, kind of put it on ice and then bring it back with a bit of fanfare and and kind of have that expectation that people will just say, "Oh, yeah, great." It's like nothing happened. Um, so I don't know how that project is going. I mean, as with everybody in the WordPress space, I wish them well. I hope it's a barntorming success, but it was a curious indication to me of, okay, I wonder if people will be able to sort of have confidence in it knowing that there was all this brewhaha and and what have you. You may not have anything to add to that. I don't if you followed that one at all. I haven't followed it very closely to be honest and I I just open the site to look at the pricing because you know how do you how do you come back after disappearing and how do you you know because launching any kind of product is about trust. If people don't trust your product and don't think you're going to hang around, why would they why would they invest their time and potentially their um their client projects in your product? Yeah. Um Yeah. And it's interesting because on this site the the only pricing is a lifetime bundle for $199. Okay. Maybe that's what they've gone to. Yeah, maybe that's how it was. I I certainly know that when when it was growing in popularity, they were all about their lifetime deal. So maybe that's literally what they've got. But um yeah, curious if you've got any commentary on that, you know, if you have um you know, positive impressions of how that all worked out and you think that Oxygen is brilliant. I'd love to hear because from the outside, not ever using it or frequenting any of the communities that surround it, I just found it all very confusing and uh like I said, I wish them success, but I thought that was curious. Oh, no. Actually, just this pricing is really confusing. There's a lifetime bundle for Oxygen 6, but then Oxygen Classic has regular pricing that starts at $129. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. May maybe Oxygen 6 is a break. Maybe it's a breaking change from Oxygen 5 or something like that. It says it's still in beta anyway. Okay. Okay. Anyway, it was a kind of an interesting study in how you can kind of, you know, in my case anyway, cause confusion. Um, having a variety of different products which ostensibly did very very similar things. We we'll see. Um, okay. Sticking with page builders though, let's move to Elementor. Big changes coming. I mean, you nobody's not heard of Elementor in the WordPress space. It's the juggernaut, isn't it, of page builders. I think 10% or something of Oh, no. No. I think it's like 29%. What? It's some bizarre number. Yeah, you go research that. But anyway, um it's a huge number. And and if you were to strip out Elementor of the growth of WordPress over the last six or seven years, the line would be very different. Elementor by itself represents a huge amount of WordPress's growth. 12%. Okay. So, I'm wildly wrong. Yeah. Thank you for putting me correct there. That's great. But they, as they say in the website, one in every eight websites. Okay. Massive. Yeah, massive. I got the numbers the wrong way around. I 21 and 12. So similar, Ray. Um the but they've got a version 4 coming out which is a massive massive undertaking. Do you want to tell us what you know? Yeah. So uh Elementor dropped their uh editor v4 as part of the uh I don't want to get this wrong, the version 3.8. 8 that came out uh last week and yeah, so this they're slowly starting to um release version 4. So the the first reviews that we've seen from you know these big popular YouTube um channels like Web Squadron you know IM Iran Sadik from Web Squad Squadron uh and also uh WP Crafter um they all love it and think it it's going to be great. It's it's um it's getting really great um feedback so far. Obviously some people have their reservations. they want to see more because it's only in alpha at this point. But um yeah, Ele Elemental is doing a lot at the moment. They this year they they've released um they had their road big um web forward event earlier in the year and they've released Ally and accessibility plugin. They've got Editor V4 coming. They've got a new send plugin. There's there's a whole lot of products that they've they've been um working on and uh yeah, it's a it's a pretty big year for Elementor. So I think editor v4 is going to drop in Q3 from what what I've heard. Uh be interesting to see how that roll out goes because it's uh uh Elemental is moving to a CSS first um um you know way of working with with um the page builder. So that's going to be a very big change that is very welcomed by many more experienced people I guess in the elemental community. But it'll be interesting to see how they transition, you know, beginners who aren't familiar with CSS into into this new new new old way of working. I did a podcast episode with the Elementor crew the other day. And what was kind of curious to me was the CSS first approach. So the idea being that it's going to be less about kind of click point drag and more about learning CSS. like I think they're going to help you through this period of change, but the idea being that you'll assign classes for different things. So, I don't know, you want a red button, you'll you'll have a class of red, which will make everything that it goes to red, and then you'll have a class of button, which you then might assign assign a border radius or a certain padding. And um and that'll be interesting. It' be interesting to see how the elemental crowd can cope with that because obviously they've pitched themselves as a no code solution. Well, this is still very much no code, but they're leaning into CSS and CSS is really going to be interesting in the next few years. If you follow that whole CSS thing, it is transformational what's coming in CSS. In fact, it's already there, but none of the page builders make much use of those things cuz they can't really. Um, so anyway, there's that. So, go and check it out. Elementor V4 links will be in the show notes. Um let's move on quick one couple of couple of ones around um publishing things as newsletters. So the first one is that the the plug-in newsletter glue which is what I actually use on my websites on WP builds uh that has been sold Leslie Sim who's built it with Armed um over the last several years has decided to uh move on to an events platform. She's got this thing called Events Koi which she's working on at the moment and as a result wasn't able to put the time into newsletter glue and has sold it. I can highly recommend it. It seems like the guy that's taking it over Tyler don't know anything about Tyler but it it I think he's basically in the industry already. You know, he's in the WordPress and newsletter industry. So hopefully the product will get some get some attention. We'll wait and see. But I don't know if you've got anything about that one. Yeah, I mean he it was really I spoke with Leslie after the sale and um she seemed ready to move on I think after you know working on newsletter glue for such a long time and she just I think she feels really reinvigorated with something new to work on you know starting again. um as as far as Tyler goes, I think he did an an interview recently with Publish the Publish Press podcast. Um but he's he's you know built this um this product payw wall project and he um works with a lot of publishers. I think a small to mediumsiz publishers and it looks like um Newsletter Glue is he's building out his suite of products to support publishers. So good on him. I'm always going to support someone who's supporting publishers since I'm one. And um it's great to see that he's picked up um you know that Leslie's moving on and she's working on something she's passionate about. Um and and Tyler's able to continue working on newslue and carry on that legacy. So yeah, the next one. Congrats around. Yes. Sorry, I I interrupted you there a little bit. The next one though might be something that Tyler doesn't want to uh to think too much about because it's a rival which seems to be coming around and it's called mailer press. Having dug around a teeny tiny little bit it I think that this is done by the company that are behind SEO press. So if you've heard of that kind of um SEO plugin um they've got a good reputation then maybe this will be a similar product to newsletter glue. There's only a video at the moment, but I'll link to the show notes and you can see it's basically a suite of blocks. You can drag the blocks in. So, if you think, I don't know, Mailchimp or Active Campaign, you know, that interface, you drag in different bits and pieces. It'll be a bit like that. And hopefully, you'll be able to build your newsletters in the WordPress block editor. Unless they do something utterly transformational, I will be sticking with newsletter glue because it literally is the perfect thing for me. So, um, anything on that or should we head over to theme switcher? No, let's move on. Okay, theme switcher pro. This one's getting some attention. It is really getting some attention. I want to speak to that actually. This is kind of curious to me. So, I am about to do an interview with Brad who is behind this plug-in. And one of the things that I want to focus on is how the heck did he get this product so much attention? Um because if if like me you obsess about WordPress, you you'll you'll know this like products come and go all the time. Some of them just get this tidal wave of attention from some influencers for one of a better word which then spawns more people to talk about it and it's this virtuous cycle. Well, he I think he's just dropped right into it. Now, maybe it's his history. He's got a long and storied history in the WordPress space, but but you know, I've seen products, not this product, but I've seen products that really, you know, could have had an an equal impact that have just come just never got the traction and just gone away. So, I am I'm really curious about how he's managed to already, as far as I can see, make it a success before it's before it's really had much of a of a chance to be battle tested. So, I'd think that's curious how personalities, influencers can influence the uh the direction of a product in such a seismic way. Definitely going to listen to that interview because that's that's fascinating how you're right like some people launch products and really struggle with marketing and don't know what where to get started. But I guess um now this is a web dev studios product, right? So that counts for a lot already, right? Big following. Yeah. that's an agency that's been around for a really long time. So, they're already well connected in the space and so some people just know where to go to, you know, approach you for an interview, you know, approach the right people who can help um spread the word. So, yeah, it's a curious idea though and to be honest with you, I kind of looking at it, I'm thinking, why don't why did we not always have this in core? And it basically what it does is it offers you the option to have two or more. I think I'm going to say or more. I could be wrong about that. But multiple themes at the same time. So you can say this page use this theme. This page use this theme. And that could be a classic theme or a blockbased theme. So this could be a real great option instead of working on a staging site to try and get your theme over to a blockbased theme and and have to do all of it in one go and then finally take staging to live. This could offer you the opportunity to just change it slowly over a number of months or years even until finally, you know, nothing now on the website is using the old theme. Okay, let's just can that and go back. But, um, that's the promise. So, I it's a really interesting product, I think. Yeah, it's a clever product. Very clever. Um, the next one I'll just mention. I just thought it was quite interesting. Um, patterns WP. Um, again, links in the show notes. I don't really have a lot to say about it because I haven't really inspected it, but it just came up on my radar. It looked like a really credible suite of patterns with a big free offering. They have a pro which obviously will offer more. I don't really know, but I always I'm I'm just drawn to these kind of things. Just the idea of leaning into patterns and loads of free stuff that's been pre-esigned by people who are much better at design than I am. So, there's nothing else to add than that. It's just there. So, yeah. Um, anything did you want to say anything about that? Probably not. No, no, no. Happy to move on. Take us into the take us into AI, Ray. H AI. Everybody's talking about it. Um, including James Leage, who is so damn smart. Um, I had a really good chat with him about the um, uh, the AI powered website builder that he has helped work on for WordPress.com. There's been a lot of there's been a lot of interesting media about this WordPress um WordPress uh site builder. Hey, have you seen a lot of the the sites out new sites outside of WordPress that have been writing about this? It's been No, no, I haven't to be honest. Go on. Oh, sites like I tried WordPress.com's new builder and it was really terrible and stuff like that. It's been a lot of bad reviews, but really um the Yeah. So, I had a chat with James. The idea with this builder is that it's it's essentially an MVP and it's designed for beginners who have never used WordPress before, who are new to it, and don't know how to get started with a website. So, as you like with a lot of these kinds of builders, you um put in a prompt um describing what kind of website you want and it it basically builds it for you. And um yeah, the the the cool thing about this product is that it's completely integrated with WordPress and the block editor. So once you come uh once you get to the end of the the AI powered bit, it drops you into the um the block editor and then you can continue building out the side. Uh and it's cool. So, um, uh, yeah, it was really good to speak to James about what, um, you know, the team wants to build out for this product and also get an idea of the other kinds of things that he's working on as, um, you know, head of, um, AI engineering at at Automatic. Um, so yeah, um, I guess I guess watch this space to see what AI all the hotness until it's until it's not. Let's uh let's let's see. Okay, there we go. Um that will be linked from the repository article that Ray wrote about that and and then couple of things. Hosting maybe we could describe it as um there's nothing to say here other than that it's happened. A2 hosting a company that's been in the WordPress space for a very long time offering their hosting up uh name change, branding change. They have acquired, wait for it, I mean this is the golden URL if you're in the hosting space. How the heck? Uh, they got hosting.com. Um, and I imagine they paid a pretty penny for it. So, if you're an A2 hosting provider user, then uh at some point in the near future, maybe already, I don't know, you're going to be using hosting.com, which just sounds pretty cool, I think. Well, if Yeah. So, so I did a bit of digging around. Uh a a source told me that the the hosting.com domain cost $2 million. Gosh. So, uh they and and so digging around with the wayback machine and going back through I I went back through, you know, all um the history. It was really interesting. Great. Nerded out one afternoon having a look. So, so it was first registered in 1996. Um it was originally um it operated under the name Hosting.com for a really long long time until 2019 essentially. Um I guess along the way the the company kind of rebranded to just hosting in capital letters as you do. Then they merged with another company called Hostway. And once those companies uh merged in 19 uh 2019, they decided to rename um to um a new company called uh entirety. So their name away from hosting.com that seems I know why. I don't know of the context around it, but they they took on they moved to uh entirety.com and then the hosting.com domain began redirecting to entirety.com. And so around um uh mid 2023, that's when a for sale landing page started appearing on the hosting.com domain. And um looking at looking at way back machine, it looks like World Host Group, which acquired A2 hosting. So So World Host Group looks to have acquired the domain around December 2024, so December last year. And um so they already had the hosting.com domain before they bought A2 hosting in I think it was in January that they they bought A2 Hosting. Um, so it's so it looks like World Host Group is they've they've grown their their company by acquiring lots of lots of hosting companies over the past 2 three years. Yeah. Yeah. And so they recently um acquired they've acquired quite a lot in the Fast Comet recently Asia and they have 30 hosting brands now and so they it looks like they're bringing them all under this hosting.com domain including A2 and so so it is a little bit sad after um you know more than two decades 20 23 years I think it is that um A2 hosting was a name and that's been brought into this larger company and somebody somewhere is just rubbing their hands together for the fantastic decision they made in 200 whatever it no 1996 1996 when they registered just like absolutely fabulous I complete aside I heard on the radio the other day that um an individual whose initials are AI. It was like I don't know like Andrew something or other you know Andrew Ignatius. Let's go with that. I couldn't think of anything that began with I. um they years and years ago, probably at about the same time, just bought the domain which had their initials. Obviously, there was no conception that AI would become the the euphemism for artificial intelligence. And they're now selling it in the year 2025. And the price tag, the beginning of the bidding, I don't know if bidding is the right word, but they've employed this guy in New York whose job it is, that's all he does, I think, is just to shift massive domain names. And the asking price is $100 million. That is insane. That is insane. And it makes me think, what the heck was I doing in 1996? Why wasn't I buy that? Why wasn't I bent over my computer just getting all the domain? It's got to be someone like Elon Musk who buys that kind of I mean or open AI, you know, some Sam Alman or something. Uh it's so memorable, isn't it? Anyway, bit of an aside. And then the other one which you've uh put in is Stellar WP who've um who've come up with this product called Stellar Sites. Tell us about that. Yeah. No, I just found this one fascinating. So Stella WP for a long time has been uh I guess an umbrella brand for several standalone uh separate products. So, you know, like, uh, learn dash, give WP, cadence, um, and, uh, I'm forgetting I'm forgetting something there. There's there's there's several different products. WP, Cadence, uh, yeah, Solar Wine as well. Yeah, you're right. Loads more, but sever several products. So, um Oh, the iconic iconic WP. Oh, that's right. And so, yeah. So it's been an umbrell umbrella brand but um in the past week or two they've launched Stella Sites which uh is a managed hosting platform that unifies their uh plugins into a a more tightly integrated vertical focused service which is interesting because now when you when you go to Stella WP um look they they're re they're slowly rebranding to push people into signing up for this hosting platform. So, they have an AI powered um uh website builder. So, it was really interesting testing this after using the WordPress.com AI powered builder. Um I kind of prefer the Stellar Sites one because it's it's it's a little bit more featurerich and it it provides more options and it guides you through. And um what's really great is that uh if you want to do something that's um you know a bit more featurerich like um a donations website or something uh a platform for selling products, you can do that with this new platform. So um yeah, I'd be really interested to see where this go this goes because it's it's um um interesting example of niche hosting that's popping up. Yeah. And when I saw this, I couldn't help but think of um Jason Coleman from Paid Membership Pro, who recently announced on Twitter that um they're looking at launching um their own managed uh hosting for their their own um customers. Um, so yeah, it's I wonder if we're going to see more um, you know, product based companies go down the road of hosting platforms. We've always had big companies being the hosting companies and now it feels like some of these smaller companies that have grown large over time, they've got the they've now got the brand reputation and deep enough pockets and maybe they've had some investment along the way to make them into a hosting company at the same time. and you throw AI into the mix and all of a sudden you've kind of got the you've got the full package, haven't you? Okay, so Stella WP launches Stella sites. Again, that'll be linked. That's on the repository as well. Okay, so that's our kind of newslettery plug-iny bit. Let's move over to the community. I suppose you could describe this as core things like that. Um, we have to mention that WordPress 6.8 has just dropped. it featured some some stuff which you may not be aware of if you just update WordPress and you don't look at the news. You might not be aware that for example your website the the hashing of the the passwords is now handled by something called BScript. It used to be handled by something called Mcript. And the the nerd value that you can get out of that would be enormous I expect if you knew what you were talking about. I don't really. I just know that one's better than the other. Um, and and we're on the better version, thankfully. Uh, go and speak to somebody like Tim Nash. He'll be able to explain it to you. But essentially, I think it's a more brute force uh a more secure way of keeping your passwords hashed within the uh the WordPress database. But also, we have this thing called speculative loading, which I think is on by default in WordPress 6.8 and beyond. And this will this is kind of voodoo and a bit scary when you say it. It's trying to figure out what you're going to do next. Um, so it's taking the the action of your mouse. So if you hover over a link, turns out that that fraction of a second that you're hovering over the link is enough for a platform like WordPress to figure out, you know what, it's highly likely that this person is going to click. So why don't I just go and start downloading that page? That's what it does. Um so the the intention being that it will already be basically in the browser ready to go so that when you do click on it it will be there either partially there or completely there and in this way will speed up websites. Fascinating to me though that the the browser can figure out fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is very cool. Um making websites faster. I' I'd never heard about this before until I started reading about it. But uh so it's called I think it's the speculation API. The speculation rules API I've forgotten but um the the way that WordPress has implemented it is fairly conservative. There are there are there are some lovely words around it and I've forgotten but it may it kind of cutesy words that go around it. We've got something like I can't remember what it is but we've got a fairly conservative interpretation of that. It is possible if you know what you're doing within WordPress to switch it on to be more aggressive so that it'll more, you know, it'll capture and start downloading everything. I guess maybe we need to think a little bit about the environment. Do we need to be downloading pages that nobody's ever going to actually look at? So maybe that's why my brain went to Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's why WordPress has gone for this. But um anyway, so that's that's there. And then there was a bunch of um editor improvements as well, but this is maybe not the place for that. But just go and poke around in Gutenberg and you'll you'll find out. Um, then what have we got? Oh, then we got the whole accessibility improvements and whether or not accessibility should become a canonical plug-in thing. I'm over to you with this one cuz you wrote this one off. Hand ball it to me. Yes. Um, so in uh what's the backstory of this one? So, a few weeks ago, back in I think it was March, uh Matt Mullenwig posted in um the core committers channel the idea of uh potentially um developing some things in a con canonical plugin. So a cononical plugin is uh a plugin that's community developed that's maintained in close alignment with core such as you know the performance plugin that the WordPress performance core performance team works on. So he suggested a few things that could be um developed as canonical plugins such as uh such as secure custom fields and uh and um I think there was uh oh there were a couple other things I that don't come to mind but accessibility was one that he mentioned as well and um uh a few people spoke to me about it. uh um Joe Doulson who's a core committer and a longtime accessibility expert. Um I also spoke with um uh I don't want to get her name wrong. Um Ryan Reedfeld who is a web accessibility specialist and also Amber Hines who runs Equalized Digital. And they were all dead against this idea. Let's just be very clear. It's a it's an idea proposal. It was it was just something that that um I guess you know at the moment there's a lot up in the air about how WordPress is moving forward. So this is a suggestion that Matt was putting out there as a way to to move accessibility forward whether it's a good idea or not. These um these folks are saying it's not. So um well some people say you know we see performance being developed as a as a plug-in outside of WordPress. Why don't why don't we do that with accessibility? Well, accessibility is a is a um a legal requirement in in some countries, especially in in Europe and um and in in the US as well. And um you know, performance isn't. So, you know, this is accessibility isn't a nice to have. It's something that's actually needed. And um and so these folks make a really good point that if we developing it is as a a cononical plugin who's going to do that work are we see going to see a duplication of effort because you know there needs to be some work in core and also in this plugin and there are just a lot of you know I guess whatifs at the moment because we don't have a proper proposal. So um yeah so just interesting to unpack it. Yeah, definitely. I who knows how that'll pan out, but the the voices were quite loud, weren't they, on the please don't put this into a canonical plug-in. You know, this should be and I think the argument that you just articulated sums it up perfectly. It is a requirement. Uh performance is legal requirement whereas performance is not. And also you might be on a different host which would you know have different expectations of what your WordPress site would perform like because of the hardware they're on or the operating system that they're using or what have you. So yeah. So that's interesting. Again, written up on the repository. You can go and check that out. Um, I was going to mention Playground. I did an interview with Beerit Powley Hack about the magic of WordPress playground. I'll just mention it like that and drop it in. I did that on the tavern. If you haven't played with Playground, it is blooming marvelous and it's getting better by the by the by the week basically. Uh, enables you to click buttons and launch WordPress in your browser. But it's doing so much more now. It really is becoming a really robust way to test things and um maybe even demo your plug-in or theme to other people. It really is remarkable and it is going at a heck of a clip. So there we go. Okay. Then we got more community related stuff. And um although this article you said a minute ago before we hit record is is a little bit older now. I think probably the the metrics that you were measuring haven't changed. This is your piece entitled Who Leads WordPress Businesses? the data confirms it's still not women. Can you remember the takeaways from that one? Yeah, I feel like I wrote this so long ago because you know 3 months in WordPress feels like a lifetime, doesn't it? Yeah. So, um last year I um I worked with WP includes which is led by the lovely Siobhan McKeen and also um Franchesca Morano and D Teal. Um it's an a nonprofit organization that um supports uh women uh to help uh equip them with with the tools they need to um to attain leadership roles in uh WordPress focused organizations. I guess yeah WordPress focused organizations. Anyway, so um WP includes launched u a gender equality in WordPress survey last year that I assisted with and then we published a report based on those key findings and and a lot of the key findings um were quite um disappointing to be honest. Um there are a lot of um I' found that there are a lot of leadership disparities with very few women at the top in in WordPress um WordPress uh companies in the ecosystem. Um only 4% of companies that have pledged for example only 4% of companies that have pledged to WordPress is five for the five five for the future initiative have women in their leadership roles. Wow. Uh in their top leadership role I should say. And then an interesting one, only five of the 69 agency partners that work with WordPress VIP have a woman in their top role. Uh, out of Yeah, five out of 69. Um, and you can kind of see how this has happened over time. Tech was a very was a fairly equal industry for a long time up until I think the the 70s ' 80s, not sure when it changed. I'd really recommend to people who want to learn more to watch uh Siobhan and De's um talk on WordPress TV from Word Camp Europe last year about um women in WordPress. It's it's a really fascinating look at at how that's kind of rolled out. But um yeah, I guess when we when we launched this uh report last year, it was a couple of days before Word Camp um it was the first day of Word Camp US, I think, and a couple of days before um Matt's uh infamous controversial uh keynote address. So the report got buried in everything that was going on. So for So that's what happened. So for word uh international women's day I decided to revisit the report 6 months on and had a really good Q&A with um Siobhan about um the findings of the report and you know the the action that we'd really like to see taken. um whether it's landed probably not because it didn't I think it feel I felt like when we put it out there it was preaching to the converted you know so all we can do is is keep putting this stuff out there and hope that people will start to pay attention eventually. Uh the link will be in the show notes. So if you want to go and check that out, you are more than welcome to. What else can we say in here? Because we are approaching the the hour mark. So let's try and cut a few out. We've got a lot in there. What do you want to go to? We've got we've got lots about automatic workforce cuts. We've got core committers struggling to keep up. I wanted to just mention I think we pass over it quickly, but the um WordPress slowing to one major release per year. Let's do that one. That was a that was a big uh a big deal. Um yeah, so that was uh that was a few weeks ago. I have to remind myself of Yeah, it feels like it was about two months ago, something like that now. No, it wasn't. It was only this in April, but it feels so Gosh. Yeah. Right. It does feels like it happened in January or something, but so yeah. So WordPress uh has the WordPress project to clarify has officially shifted to one release per year. Um we've just seen the release of WordPress uh 6.8 which is the only release for 2025. The only major release we should say only Yes, I should say major release. So we could still we'll we'll still see minor releases coming. In fact, we have we had a 6.8.1 already. So yeah. Yes. Y and hats off to Aaron Jordan who's who's leading those releases at the moment. He is an excellent core committer. Uh and yes, so the next major release won't be released until sometime next year. Um sometime in 2026. We don't know when. There's no no real schedule for that yet. Um and the interesting thing um that Matt has said is um maybe no, maybe it wasn't Matt who said it. No, Mary Hubard. Um it's really about the lawsuits with WP Engine. um in her announcement she said that you know if the lawsuits are dropped or resolved um the cadence will be uh revisited and um there'll be a strong consideration to returning to a three-year release uh three releases per year. I was going to say that's much worse. Yeah, we'll go to one release and that's it. I love it. So um it's definitely slowed down. Um, and I guess we'll Yeah, we'll wait and see what happens. Everyone's really upset about it though being one release per year. Quite a few people have been um talking about there's some potential upsides. Obviously, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of concern in the community about it, but I I've seen quite a lot of people saying actually I wonder if you know this is happening. We can't change that. That's now how it is. Are there any bits which can be perfected? you know, maybe the fact that we've got a longer road map, it will allow plug-in and theme developers to, for example, test their code more because they'll have this long runway. Um, also maybe it'll get some attention to other things because we won't be just dropping features all the time. And obviously, if features are dropping and the block editor is changing all the time, that makes it difficult to well, as an example, the newsletter glue plugin, they probably have to keep a breast of absolutely everything that's going on with the block editor to make sure that nothing breaks. And if well I suppose that was a bad example because Gutenberg the plug-in is released fairly regularly still. But anyway, so some sort of not counter arguments but people trying to I guess make the best out of the uh the situation. So anyway, that's it. Yeah. So we'll get a a version 6.9 probably in 2026 as it stands and then a version seven probably in 2027. So, a huge change actually and um we'll see how that impacts the community and what people make of that cuz we haven't really felt the effects of that. Everything at the moment feels like it's the same because 6.8 came out when it when it would have done. 6.8.1 came out when it would have done. But by now we're expecting 6.9 in the next I don't know couple of months something like that. And obviously that won't happen. So, it will only be in the next few months that we'll notice that that hasn't occurred and and we'll see how that goes. Um, and then I suppose the last one, time is the enemy here. Darn, we got loads. The last one I that I think maybe we should touch on is the um the reinstating of a bunch of people in the WordPress community. So, this was this whole thing about people getting blocked from um let me I list off the things I can think of. Make Slack, WordPress.org. That was probably it, wasn't it? Um and many people being um banned on social media accounts as well. Oh, okay. Um across WordPress's various social accounts. But yeah, this is an interesting one because it just kind of dropped out of nowhere with Matt posting on Twitter that he was having problems with trying to unblock people. So, it was there was no official announcement. It was like, "Oh, hey, I'm trying to do this, but it's not working." Um, and then it and then it slowly came out as a strange post on WordPress.org that, oh yes, we we're unblocking everybody. And then there was Matt's um post on his personal blog that um uh acknowledging um the Pope's death. And there was a post also on word another post on WordPress.org um um WordPress Jubilee that was acknowledging the Jubilee in the Catholic tradition. And so it looked like this was all tied to some kind of Easter revelation. I'm not sure. I don't want to make assumptions, but um anyone's guess is as good as mine, I guess, or my guess is as good, but as as what anyone else can try and ascertain out of what's going on, but um I spoke anyway to cut through all that, I had a chat with Mary Hubard to to get stats. And so, um she she clarified for me that 32 WordPress accounts that were blocked since September have been unblocked. And so that includes people like Ryan McHugh who's really really um he's been a longtime core committer and created the um WordPress REST API. He's been he's back people like Yoast Deval um Kareem Aruki as well and say Reed people who were blocked because of governance issues and so they're all back. Um do you know if they've been taking that bull by the horns? Have they been embracing their um unblockedness, if you know what I mean? Or has it more was it more a case of okay, I've been blocked. That that's me. I'm I'm done. Or I I maybe you don't know. I don't know. So, uh I haven't seen I haven't seen them taking advantage of being back. Yeah. I know. I know. For people like Ryan, it was quite distressing to be banned and to suddenly be, you know, not be able to log into an account he'd been using for 20 plus years. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's it's a tough one because I know a couple of people have written blog posts about being banned and what it was like. Uh, so I think it's a bit bittersweet to get their accounts back. Yeah. I I guess in some respects you make other plans, don't you? you you life probably has moved on in different directions for all of those 32 people and maybe maybe they've found other things to do. Maybe they'll you know welcoming in it and we'll come back. But uh again we'll link to that but that's that's a fairly obviously you know if we go back 10 months we none of us foraw any of this and now we're in the position where you know people were banned and now have been unbanned. Um then you know it moved in one direction it seems to be moving in another direction. Maybe only time will tell what the reasons for all of that are, but um yeah. Okay, that's that's all I think we got time for. Darn it. Yeah. Jeez. And it's like 4 in the morning where you are. Not quite. Not quite. Definitely not that late. Ray is We're recording this kind of, you know, it's early afternoon for me, which means in Australia it's brutal o'clock. It's uh 10 to 11. 10 to 11. Yeah. Well, here you are talking to me at 10 to 11. I think that's pretty pretty brutal. Um, so I appreciate that. We have put so many other things that we could have talked about. Sadly, time is the enemy, but we'll we'll end it there. So, if you've got any commentary on that, head over to wpbuilds.com, search for this, what just happened episode, what did we think? Episode four, I think we agree. Episode four. Episode four. And, uh, give us some commentary if you if you want to do that. And don't forget, go to the repository. Just Google it and go there and subscribe right away. And if you don't, you're very naughty. Um cuz it's brilliant. And uh this is what keeps keeps Ray awake at 11:00 at night is thinking about WordPress and keeping us all informed. So Ry, without further ado, I'm going to say thank you so much for chatting to me. I really appreciate it. No, I really enjoy doing this uh podcast. It's It's a lot of fun. You're you're very good. Very very good. Thank you so much. Okay, that's all we've got for you this week. Before I fade in the cheesy music at the very very end, I would just like to thank once more Ray Mor for joining me and summing up the last three months in the WordPress space incredibly effectively. I hope that you did enjoy it. If you did, you've got any comments about that, head to WP Builds, search for episode number 423, and please leave us a comment there. The WP Builds podcast is brought to you today by GoDaddy Pro. GoDaddy Pro, the home of managed WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL, and 24/7 support. Bundle that with the Hub by GoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients, and get 30% off new purchases. Find out more at go.me/wpuilds. We're also joined this week by Bluehost. Bluehost. Redefine your web hosting experience with Bluehost Cloud. Managed WordPress hosting that comes with lightning fast websites, 100% network uptime, and 24/7 priority support. With Blue Host Cloud, the possibilities are out of this world. Experience it today at bluehost.com/cloud. Keeping the lights on this week are also Omnisend. Omnisend. Do you sell your stuff online? Then meet Omnisend. Yes, that's Omnisend, the email and SMS tool that helps you make 73 bucks for every dollar spent. The one that's so good it's almost boring. Hate the excitement of roller coaster sales. Prefer a steady line going up? Try Omnisend today at omnisend.com. And sincere thanks go to Godaddy Pro, Bluehost, and Omnisend for their support of the WP Builds podcast. Okay, that really, really, really is very, very, very near the end of the podcast. The cheesy music will come in a moment. Just before then, I would like to thank you, dear listener. Thanks for engaging with the podcast. If you would like to subscribe, head to wpbuilds.com/subscribe. And if you fancy getting your name in the podcast, head to wpbuilds.com/advertise to find out more. As always, some cheesy music is about to fade in. And all that I need to say is stay safe. Have a good week. Bye-bye for [Music] now. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music], 423 – What Just Happened? Episode 4, WP Builds, 01jwekap9hwyffe06rsy6tcwmh.