A Look Back at WordPress 2024  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Minute Tutorials]] - Full Title: A Look Back at WordPress 2024 - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #WordPress - #2024Review - #OpenSource - #CommunityDynamics - #Gutenberg - #BusinessEvolution Author: Matt Mullenweg, Mark Zansky, Brian Cords Source: YouTube Live Stream - [A Look Back at WordPress 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_kXvL3rBo) Reference: Video Transcript, 2024 date created: {{date:2024-12-18}} {{time:00:00}} --- # Title: A Look Back at WordPress 2024 ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#summary) - [📖 Main Content](#main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#notes) - [📝 Newsletter](#newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#hypotheses) - [🔮 Future Research](#future-research) - [📊 Methodology](#methodology) - [❓ Questions](#questions) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#seo-evaluation) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#darvo-analysis) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#deib-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#accessibility-assessment) - [🎯 Conclusion](#conclusion) ### References: - [YouTube Video: A Look Back at WordPress 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_kXvL3rBo) ## 📝 Summary: The "A Look Back at WordPress 2024" live stream serves as a year-end review, featuring discussions with WordPress community leaders and reflections on the evolution of the platform. The stream highlights both the community's challenges and its achievements over the year, touching on key issues like Gutenberg, WP Engine's influence, and the shifting dynamics within the WordPress ecosystem. ## 📖 Main Content: This year's WordPress community faces fractures that mirror political divides. While the first half of the year was energetic and productive, the latter half saw increased tension within the community. The shift from a collaborative, open-source platform to a more commercialized ecosystem has sparked debate about WordPress's identity and the role of contributors in shaping its future. ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Community Divide**: - WordPress community debates have intensified, with some questioning the software's purpose and direction. - Issues like Gutenberg's place within WordPress and the growing influence of commercial entities have led to discontent. - The sense of unity that defined early WordPress culture has diminished. - **Matt's Reflection**: - Matt Mullenweg discusses the challenges of leading a large, commercialized open-source project. - He contrasts the early days of WordPress with its current state, suggesting the community's transformation is inevitable but not without growing pains. - **Gutenberg and Business**: - Gutenberg remains a divisive topic. Some see it as essential for WordPress's evolution, while others feel it undermines the platform's flexibility. - WordPress's growing commercial interests are highlighted by discussions of partnerships and the increasing role of companies like WP Engine. - **The Future of WordPress**: - The panel explores what the future holds for WordPress, particularly whether it can reclaim its once-close-knit community spirit. - There are mixed feelings about the direction of the platform, with some expressing optimism and others feeling that the magic of WordPress is fading. ## 📖 References: - [WordPress.org](https://wordpress.org/) - [Matt Mullenweg - WordPress State of the Word](https://wordpress.org/about/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. **Matt's Nostalgia for WordPress's Early Days**: *Paraphrased*: Matt reflects on the early days of WordPress, when it was a tight-knit community of contributors driven by a shared passion for open-source innovation. Over time, he acknowledges that WordPress has transformed, with the growing presence of commercial interests changing the ecosystem and diluting the original sense of community. 2. **Brian's Insight on WordPress's Future**: *Paraphrased*: Brian suggests that while WordPress will continue to be a key tool in the web development world, its evolving nature means it is no longer the "campfire" it once was. As the platform becomes more corporate and business-driven, the community's spirit may not return, but the platform’s practical value remains strong. ## 📰 Newsletter: In 2024, WordPress faced a year of transitions, with key moments that defined its direction. Despite challenges, including internal debates about Gutenberg and commercialization, the platform remains a central player in the open-source world. This issue dives into the biggest shifts, including the role of WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg’s reflections on the future of WordPress. ## ✅ Action Items: - **Alignment with Professional Focus**: The article aligns with my focus on open-source sustainability, showcasing the evolution of WordPress as a business-driven project. The ongoing debates highlight the challenges in keeping WordPress truly open-source while accommodating business needs, a key topic for my open-source advocacy and contributor engagement. - **Professional Development**: The shifting dynamics of WordPress present new opportunities for education and engagement, particularly around community challenges and the commercialization of open-source. Focus on understanding these transitions will aid in future efforts to advocate for transparency and inclusivity within the WordPress ecosystem. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. The growing commercialization of WordPress will lead to more fractures within the community, potentially weakening its open-source ethos. 2. WordPress’s community-centric features like Gutenberg will evolve into more inclusive tools, but they may alienate some contributors who prioritize flexibility over uniformity. 3. As WordPress becomes more business-driven, the emergence of competitor platforms will increase, potentially leading to a major fork or alternative project gaining traction. ### 📊 Methodology: - Conduct longitudinal studies on community engagement metrics from WordPress forums, GitHub, and other developer platforms. - Survey WordPress contributors to assess feelings toward the platform’s direction and the impact of business involvement. - Analyze market trends in the open-source CMS space to identify emerging competitors and their potential to disrupt WordPress. ### ❓ Questions: 1. How can WordPress balance its commercial growth with its open-source roots? 2. What specific steps can be taken to revive the sense of community that once defined WordPress? 3. Will Gutenberg continue to evolve as a core feature, or will it eventually be replaced by a more flexible solution? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Examine the long-term impact of corporate sponsorships and partnerships on open-source software projects. - Investigate the role of AI tools in the future of WordPress and its community. - Study the potential for new open-source CMS platforms to emerge, leveraging the current fractures within WordPress’s ecosystem. ### 💡 Implications: Future research on the impact of commercialization within WordPress could offer valuable insights for other open-source projects facing similar challenges. The findings could inform strategies for balancing business interests with the preservation of community-driven innovation. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: The video format supports visual learners, though integrating visual aids like charts or infographics could enhance understanding. - **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: The live stream’s conversational style benefits auditory learners. An audio-only version or podcast would be beneficial for accessibility. - **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: The transcript provides rich verbal explanations of complex ideas, though more storytelling elements could further engage verbal learners. - **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: The logical progression of WordPress’s evolution is well-suited for those who prefer structure, but more detailed data analysis would improve clarity. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: The YouTube video is accessible, but providing transcripts or captions for complex discussions would improve accessibility. - **Keyboard Navigation**: The video player supports keyboard navigation, but transcriptions should be clearly formatted for screen readers. - **Text Resizing**: Ensure that transcripts are designed to be responsive for - Document Tags: [[Matt Mullenweg]] [[WordPress]] - Summary: Join Mark Szymanski and Matt Medeiros as they look back on the year of WordPress. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ_kXvL3rBo hey it's Matt from the wp minute thanks for joining today's live stream and sort of capping off the 2024 year in WordPress with our special guests today as always you can subscribe to the wp minute over atth WP minute.com subscribe as it is the number one way to stay connected with all the things that we do here at the wp minute from publishing freelancer blogs to doing tutorial videos here on YouTube and of course the extended interviews that you know and love at the wp minute plus podcast all of that stuff can be found weekly at the wp.com Subscribe if your WordPress business now is a great time to sponsor the wp minute our deals are still going throughout the month of December if you want to support the work that we do here at the wp minute reach out to me on Twitter on Blue Sky send me an email or go to the wp.com contre out let me know that you would like to have your WordPress or WordPress Centric business front and center to a very engaged WordPress Community here at the wp minute the audience the listeners the viewers the commenters the tweeters the posters the wp.com cont if you want to support our work and get your business set up on a fantastic Omni Channel publishing platform that is the wp minute we're going to dive into today's video in a moment go ahead kick back relax uh bring your questions comments concerns into the comment section wherever you're watching today's video here we go with another live stream only at the wp minute.com [Music] oh my friends Mark zansky and Brian cords this is the year end end of the year beautiful intro this is the end of this is the end of Wordpress I don't know just kidding oh boy welcome everybody uh joining the live stream I made that video minutes before which is why we were late got another special video coming up too um it's fun it's fun I love European dance party like a raid or something this is sick this is for the likes if you're watching like the video smash the like button share it on social media I got to do all the things that I've learned from Kevin gir on how to live stream on YouTube notice I said Kevin Gary and not Mark samansky he's one of the best I'm just I'm a Noob uh Mark where can folks find you on the web let's get those let's get those Kudos out of the way first what are you up to these days where can folks find you yeah if you just head over to mj. bio I have all my links there it's a little Link in BIO page I'm on YouTube uh yeah I'm around I'm on X all the stuff just go there and you can find me you do your live you're doing your live stream this week right is a special holiday one you're going to wear like a reindeer suit or something yeah I don't know I might have to go buy one real quick um yeah Thursday is 11:00 a.m. eastern you know that's that's where I'm at I'm on the interwebs doing these types of things so appreciate you having me Matt as always excited for this conversation Brian cords uh prolific WordPress content creator got a new podcast I think it's the best highest rated last time I checked the charts highest rated WordPress podcast in the month of December um where can folks find that uh yeah you can get the podcast it's web masters. FM available where all fine podcasts are syndicated and uh YouTube and and whatnot and uh have a lot of really exciting guests coming up how has that Journey been for you podcasting and doing all the things terrible um podcasting it's like WordPress it's like ancient technology and nothing works and you think you're going to do it yourself and then some giant tech companies come in and say like no we're going to make it all worse for you but uh the actual conversations have been fun I noticed that uh my my episode has been the worst in the series as expected you know I'm not really the the developer type sort of Web Master I like to consider myself a Web Master is that a play on words like web Masters for anyone or are you kind of like holding that close to the chest no it's like um you know like back in the day you know whoever launched the website or Managed IT they'd be like a web master and I I like still talk to a lot of people that work at like universities and stuff and like that's what they call you still if you're running all the WordPress sites at a university or something then you're like the Web Master so uh no you don't have to be a developer you just be a somebody who makes things on the web Mark do you resonate with Web Master it's always been a hard thing because I don't I don't I'm definitely not a designer not really developer yeah web web admin Web Master I don't know it's it's tough but I like Web Master I love the series too it's fantastic Brian good stuff man and you came up like your focus uh Mark was it right that was like the core of the business and then you got into web yeah I was I was mainly I was dabbling with that yeah you don't want to go too deep into the IT thing unless you like actually want to pull your hair out so yeah it's it was always dabbling there but um yeah kind of went that more of the actual design development route yeah so you could help me set up my printer ah I mean for a pretty penny for pretty penny maybe for a pretty penny well today we're going to talk uh about we're going to look back we're going to look back on the year of 2024 we're going to get some opinions from Mark zansky and Brian cords hopefully those of you who are also watching uh in the chat if you're out there go ahead and say hi all six of you and uh chime in with whatever it is you have to say about the year 2024 we're going to take see I told both of these guys we're going to talk about 2024 I went all the way back I went back to like 2009 and I got some interesting insights uh into um state of the word state of the word just happened 2024 in Tokyo I was asleep not through the whole thing but I was asleep when it happened and I got some great highlights from it we I I blogged about it a lot of matias's uh matias's L look on on WordPress we can chat about that uh for uh for a little bit I'm going to play this new segment uh that I uh quickly recorded minutes before I hit record it is not edited so you'll see me looking away clearing my throat it's the Matt rants section here we go so here we are folks 2024 and we're still arguing over what WordPress even is is it a CMS a blogging tool the operating system of the web it's like we're debating whether water is wet meanwhile the community has been locked in these epic battles that make Republicans and Democrats look like a Kumbaya Circle Gutenberg the site editor people still treat them like the new kid on the Block who caught smoking behind the gym it's been a year of We can't agree on what we're doing but we're definitely not agreeing quietly then there's this nuclear level slap fight automatic versus WP Engine versus private Equity versus open source morality you know the big question if you make money off open source and don't give back does that make you Darth Vader suddenly the WordPress World feels like a two-party system you're either with Matt or against him everybody's so busy picking sides we've completely forgotten how to just build cool stuff together remember the good old days when we love WordPress because it was new and open and gave us something we'd never had before that feeling is on life support now it's just a tool still good software sure but the magic campfire where we all saying We Are The World Is Burning Out the community's fractured the love story's gone stale and we're left wondering is this it we'll still see Forks Alternatives and maybe the next big thing but will it bring back that old spark don't hold your breath Tech is evolving AI Hardware whatever the next Frontier is the suits have learned their lesson let's lock it down early so if you're staying with WordPress great if you're Jumping Ship also great just don't expect that warm fuzzy feeling we once had it's business now we'll figure it out where the chip Falls in a few years until then WordPress is still one of the greats maybe just not the one that is the love of our lives anymore that's what I have for you at the end of this fantastic year um I'm looking at it I'll sa you know I shared my thoughts there I'm squarely looking at two halves of the years even though it's you know really this last three or three and a halfish months feels like an entire half uh I really see uh two chapters of of 24 Mark let me kick it to you first do you have a way of framing 2024 for you do you have a summary of sorts for your um your experience in in WordPress for 2024 I mean it was uh you know interesting for me because it was my first like full year I mean I you know I just started I honestly met you guys less than less than a year ago or a year year in some change um it was a whirlwind on my end from my perspective started off extremely good um very high energy and everything like that still high energy but obviously in that last portion of the Year there kind of got a little dicey uh we're on Ground Zero for you know all the stuff at WC us um I think probably you know there's different buckets I would put it in like you know how's like if we analyze this from like where the community is versus where the software is versus where the business is I'm sure you probably have some some uh you know you guys have some thoughts on that um I mean it's just been wild I don't know how else to frame the uh the high level of it um but uh it's gotten a little interesting here at the end and I think that we've seen you know like kind of you said there in the in that that wonderful pre-recorded video there to begin this segment um they uh the the the latter half of this year has gotten very interesting from the community aspect which I think is a large percentage of this uh you know of this project and everything so um that's my high level we'll get into more but yeah Brian uh you or one of your many children have any thoughts on can you hear them this 2024 season can you hear them screaming in the background it's great it's great good Cu uh I think somebody turned off Full House so now they're upset um yeah you know I was actually just realizing that I think it was the beginning of this year for me where I did the WPA Tavern writing trial and I was trying to think of what what's happened since that beginning of the year in WordPress it was like WP Tavern trial Matt takes the sabatical uh Matt comes back from the sabatical um all that sort of you know WP engine stuff happened it feels like that's been longer than a year but I guess it really just has all been 2024 but the Highlight for me right now is that I've been asking you over and over to do a Matt report style rant at the camera where you do like a presented argument on something and I'm just like so grateful that you did and you gave me all the my favorites what is WordPress for you didn't say blue collar but I I wanted you to say blue collar um you know that was a classic Matt report moment and I just thank you because I've been bugging you for that yeah and I'm glad I could share it with you live uh In This Very virtual uh this very virtual room yeah I mean at beginning of the year I felt like it was sort of part for the course but but WordPress but definitely we were really starting to have inflection moments of man are we doing the right thing with is WordPress doing the right thing are we doing the right thing by WordPress it was that debate that we've had for many years and I'm going to play some clips from past word uh state of The Words which should actually like you know kind of illustrate how we've all been at this for a very long time um but the point is is like it was sort of like part for the course it was like that intense debate start of the year what are we doing with WordPress we on the right track um it wasn't something we haven't seen before although really started to get long in the tooth with site editor and Gutenberg and is it the right tool that thing um and then this this WP engine stuff and automatic stuff and Matt stuff has really um really split the community and um you know it's pushing I mean it certainly has pushed people away without a doubt more than any other uh feature or decision you know or color scheme that has been picked for for WordPress or the dashboard than ever before and uh it's an unfortunate thing I don't know if it can be repaired how long it would take for like that Community feeling to come back uh and at the end of the day is it something that is needed like do we need that Kumbaya that we grew up with or can we just finally say WordPress is that tool it's in my tool belt it's alongside Drupal it's alongside hand coating a solution it's alongside having AI build a solution for me instead like do we just look at it and go oh that was a thing I I I helped build for 20 years but now it's just a useful tool sitting on top of the tool chest right I I don't that's the feeling I have uh you know and I don't know how long and if if it if it gets back I urge that Community feeling to get back the only thing that I know how to do is to have like you know these these discussions and gather folks around a central um concept ideal uh or passion that they have for WordPress but I don't think the the hallway track of of word camps and and building this thing together is uh is ever coming back and maybe that's just life uh I don't know thoughts comments suggestions I mean I think I don't know I I like talking about the future because I like to predict stuff and I just from seeing you know being really into it this year obviously being in WordPress but really being into this year you know talk having so many conversations with guys like you you both and so many other people and then seeing how the community reacted to something like that after learning and getting deeply ingrained in the community um you know I would you know if you guys have seen me talk about this recently it's like I'm not like overly bearish I don't think like WordPress is necessarily going to go away but I do think that this was severe I mean I do think this was definitely a big fracture I think there's a lot of people that that did leave you can kind you can definitely see it um and it's something that is somewhat unfortunate but also Matt you've been talking about this for years and years cuz you predict stuff 5 years before it happens uh you know you you've been talking about like the Band-Aid type moment and I feel like this was was kind of one of those moments and um I part of me wants to say it was kind of necessary because I don't know how you get to this level I feel like this is unchartered territory from my understanding and my experience uh which is you know albeit somewhat limited on like an open source project of this m magnitude that impacts this amount of people and is at this scale uh I'm not saying it's not an easy thing to do and to handle and to you know pilot that gracefully so I mean I'm not really I I guess what I'm kind of saying is I'm not really as surprised as to where we're at I feel like it kind of had to happen this way I always I always do that quote from Spencer Foreman from the wp tonic episode I was on like he he painted this great picture of being around a campfire before and now we're no long around a campfire and I love that visual because it literally is exactly that it's like it went from that which was awesome but now it's so big that you know you can't it's not the same experience it's not really the same thing even though it's still called WordPress still operates the same um and I just think there's a lot of that that uh is very nuanced and it's difficult to get across in you know the short videos and segments that we see because there's just so much history and I've tried to absorb as much as I can but again I'm still early on in my journey earlier much earlier than you guys so I think one of the thing you and I talked about this I believe in a episode that's yet to to come out um here on the wp minute and I think I think this is just a human psyche thing right where we've built we've been building WordPress for so long uh and just time is elusive you just never really know like was it like like Brian said before it feels like it's been like three years we've been going through this it's been like almost four months of like this you know the current debacle and um yeah we're going to take a look back at some of this stuff in um in the uh the lineage of of WordPress but I think it's this thing where we feel like just yesterday we were all hanging out doing this thing it's a hard thing to let go of right it's a hard thing to let go of uh because one you want the success of Wordpress we all do and you might have like this desire for WordPress success you might have this desire for open source success you might just have the desire to like I want my business to be healthy and and profitable and that's why you want this thing to to survive but also it's like when you when you take a step back and you see where we've come man it's happened like year after year I've been going back on these state of the words and it's just like you see this progression both like positive and negative right you see this progression of Matt as a as a leader of it you see like the progression of automatic you see how like these these talks have gone from like in a donated classroom at a university back in 20072 2008 to now like the city of Tokyo in the background right this just like huge um a huge difference there Brian you know I never asked you when did you officially get into WordPress what was your starting point in uh your your Waypoint in this community like do you remember how connected it was and and what was it for you yeah the first time I got into like the community side of it was I went to I was working at a place where I was just like the in-house website person and I went to work Camp Orange County so maybe 2016 to 2018 somewhere in that range and I had no idea about anything it just was like Hey some people are meeting at you know a couple hundred people are meeting to talk about WordPress had no idea all these people that were on the stage you know I remember like a Chris Lemma and stuff like that no idea who these people were no idea who anyone was and uh yeah from that moment it was like a a trigger you know switched and I and I sort of engaged with the community but I think I came in by that point and it was already a bit more professional there was big hosting companies in a sponsor Hall there you know and this was a small conference so I don't you know that shift that you're talking about that's saying it's getting a little bit more corporate it's getting a little bit more professional I think there's definitely whether people will admit it or not I think they kind of want that like they want WordPress to get a little bit more professional and better and they want to see that so I think it's kind of people getting getting what they want you know I'm going to do the old Loop back trck I'm going to play some clips for those of you watching live you'll see these clips on the screen for those of you listening afterwards um check out the YouTube channel if you want to kind of see uh the visual impact uh from word I keep saying word camps but state of the words from years ago this is a clip from 2009 this is the early days of um of Wordpress I'm really pulling this out for the marks in the crowd to kind of see uh where WordPress was and and and things we've done we as a community uh um and why we feel so attached to this I'm going to do the old loop back device thing on my Hardware you guys on the panel know how difficult this is for me sometimes uh just thumbs up if you talk it's going to loop back in just thumbs up if you hear it after I hit play does anyone remember this anyone use WordPress at this time all right we got one two oh a fair number so you can have you there were no colors it was all black and white that was the logo I designed we're not using that one anymore thankfully no one tattooed it you can only have one category there was no publish button just to blog this it was very simplistic no options no wizzywig no tags no anything this was WordPress I think 70 later we upgraded we put a little blue in the logo we added a few more buttons there you could save his draft save his private Advanced editing which then took you to a screen so this was our simple editor then it was an advanced editor did everything it had like everything smooshed on the one page we later upgraded we put your title at top I believe this was 2.0 but not many other changes then came the revolution we introduced the color blue this was quite controversial who knew blue could be so much trouble this is I believe 2.0 and we added two things in there we allowed you to move stuff around added a wizzy wig which almost caused a revolution in the WordPress community and put a little blue in there 2.5 we did the big redesign those of you remember this we worked papy call looked at the usability tried to simplify things and then we did Crazy Horse right who saw Crazy Horse when it first came out this is what it looked like and these screenshots leaked through the internet I thought if we called it Crazy Horse no one would use it but it turns out the D AR think I was like oh this is going to be the worst thing ever it's horrible this is the ugliest interface I've ever seen but luckily we managed to go from that to this which is what we all use and love today hopefully so just a little to prime prime the panel and those who are watching just a little walk down sort of memory lane um you know to look at where WordPress was way back to uh the 2.5 is days and we'll eventually see 3.0 which was obviously the biggest sort of leap at least for me and I think for many of us in the space um but the interesting thing here for me out of that clip was man the debates were happening about colors in pixels years ago like this is stuff that I always talk to to Mark about like man we've seen this story a gazillion times obviously not to the magnitude of let's put wpn automatic mat on a different pedestal here but we've seen these intense debates which is actually was a product name for automatic right at one point intense debate which was or was that a third party plugin either way uh we've seen this stuff in the past Brian anything from you like sort of looking back at where WordPress was and and sort of how it evolved you do you see that and sort of just like ah that was nice I remember those nice easy days or um you know the debate of colors and and pixels and things like that and any thoughts when you saw this clip I mean when I saw the clip the first thought was people have been complaining about WordPress changing since the beginning of time like everybody just wants it to be version 03 or whatever and never change uh it's kind of insane that you're seeing what feels like the exact same conversation happening but um yeah I mean I do think there's we'll probably look at the entire history of Wordpress and we'll probably say there's two critical moments I mean people would probably have said thesis and Gutenberg but I think now it'll be Gutenberg and WP engine will be the two critical moments that are the most shocking and stuff but um you know to be fair Gutenberg has people will disagree but it has paid off a bit and you know even when you look at like web stats and it's like Elementor eight% of sites block editor 5% of sites it's like that's pretty fast it's getting pretty widespread I get emails constantly of developers who are ready to jump on board with it it it's taken some time but like that bet paid off I think people are realizing it so I you know I think it's just the uh natural tendency to complain about change a lot of the times Mark that what did that that interface probably made you puke right you were probably just like how did anyone use this I mean it was a different time uh you said that was 2009 I was years old that was from the 2009 uh yeah word word Camp talk yeah so um yeah I was going into high school there I think um but uh anyway um my my first thing watching that was who was that guy giving that presentation cuz that that guy was awesome I mean he seemed awesome um a little different now um which I understand I'm not saying it's it's again I don't it's I'm OBS I'm I'm an observation guy I'm not trying to like be critical but I'm trying to understand um yeah obviously that interface was kind of but it was in 2009 so it's like totally understandable um where it's gotten since then I agree with what Brian's saying like People's Natural in you know inclination a lot of times is to you know reject change no matter what it is uh I've obviously been quite vocal about the fact that I'm one of the younger people that I know of in this community at least the vocal ones there's people that have been here a long time I obviously like to get kind of philosophical or like psychological some of these types of things and I understand be I understand I can empathize with the idea of being around the community and being around a product for so long that you feel like you had a true impact on whether that was in the pr or the if you've been around for this 20 years like WordPress is a part of you I totally understand that and I feel like that's why it like hurts so bad for people to see something like this and be like oh that's the last straw I'm out of here XYZ or whatever or just like to see Strife in the community in general um the only thing I could say there is that I I just I just don't see an I don't see a a different pathway maybe maybe it would have been a little the path would have been a little different but the end result I still I don't know if it would have been any different again it's just go back to the scale thing it's so big now that I feel like there had to be that type of a of a thing and this comes again from talking to you Matt like there's it's just too big it's too big it's business it's always really been business but now it's really business and unfortunately people that have used it and have been in varying levels of business so to speak like in it and like how deep they've been and how much money they made from from it how serious they are about the platform from that business side not just a project side that all of those things you know you're going to get a different reaction from every single person depending on where they are on those types of uh those variables so to speak that they line up with um yeah it's just uh it's interesting to see the change though for sure from 2009 uh it's interesting you bring up like the the point as we go into this next clip this was also from uh 200 N I believe I pretty sure I haven't moved to 2010 yet but there's this Evolution and if I had more time to like put this all together there's there's definitely a line that you can draw between like obviously the growth of of Wordpress and uh money coming into automatic and sort of I've never really focus any of my conversations with Matt around like wealth and stuff like this but you can definitely see a trend of him getting wealthier automatic doing better let's just call it that like automatic doing better raising more money becoming much more formal like it's just the Natural Evolution of like you said Mark business and you and you can see it from which I didn't pull pull together but uh in the start of these videos you you would have the logos of sponsorship right so in 2009 2010 I believe was in San Francisco I can't remember if 2009 was 2008 was definitely in like some classroom um but the logos were like Microsoft Adobe Rackspace um like you know your typical big Tech business back then Google um and then you you know you started to see it evolve over over time with just like the WordPress stuff and you know I don't know if that was just intentional or whatever it just how it all shaked out um but you you start to see these clear indicators of of how he talks about WordPress business how the presentations evolve into a much more like automatic branding things just getting more professional which is which is fine but you start to see the clues sort of like stack up over time and um yeah it's either just from like WordPress growth or or just like yeah I don't know if it's intentional but here's what Brian was talking about before GPL and Commercial themes this was the intense debate you kind of see some things here that are are kind of similar to what's happening these days loop back here we go the new problem the new sort of challenge that we're facing with themes is this whole idea of GPL versus premium who uses a premium theme a better is proprietary for many of themes we had a big problem last year because people started induced themes that remember the freedoms I talked about before the freedoms of the GPL the freedoms of Open Source that would restrict your freedoms they would say you can buy this theme for 80 bucks but you can't redistribute it and only use it on one site you have to keep a foot link and any number of things um but fortunately some folks this year led by Brian Gardner Revolution and some other people following started to actually take their premium themes so themes that were had extra features paid support things like that and make them GPL people ask how can it be GPL and cost money remember the First Freedom you have the freedom to do whatever you like with the software including charge for it we could charge a dollar for WordPress or something like that but whoever gets it from you has also the freedom to redistribute it if they like they should call it something different there's nothing incompatible about selling a GPL theme it's a cool business model we'll talk about business models in the future what they're selling the code is becoming a commodity right but if they're able to sell the support the updates the everything like that it's pretty viable we've had one of the premium theme guys like the thesis guys were like oh you should sue us to proove the GPL or something like that I don't want to do that but we do want to encourage to good things we're going to be putting a page of all the people who are doing premium supported commercially supported themes so basically highlighting the people who are abiding by GPL and allowing the community to grow abiding by the GPL allowing the community to grow commercial uh landing page for for WordPress products these are things you will never see again uh unless you get an officially supported Marketplace I don't want to spend too much time on this one but this was an interesting point again back to you Brian when you brought up thesis before uh this was that that moment where I think we started to see Matt get more serious about uh the business side I mean still hinting at the at sort of like this community business thing but that thesis moment um you know he he makes a little joke here that they said to sue to sue them for to like prove the GPL um in fact he did but but I don't think it was because they you know they were cheering him on to do it although I don't remember U mixer G by the way if you look if you search for mixer G interview Matt Mullen WG uh thesis I'm forgetting his name Chris Pearson uh great PE uh great uh interview there uh Brian any thoughts on the memory lane and and having themes and Brian Gardner leading Revolution themes you heard that yeah I mean I I think it's the the core issue that we're still dealing with today which is like how do you make money and make something open source and I've been playing with all these AI tools that are like supposedly open source and they all have dual licenses where they're like you get a Core thing for free but the minute you want any good features that part of their code is not open source anymore it's like a different commercial license so it's like yeah you can install our AI tool on your server but the minute you want to add more users you're not under the open source license anymore so it's like they're trying to find ways to solve it like we're we're still dealing with that same exact situation and the same kind of misunderstanding of what open source is and what the point of it is and the point is always like yes you can see the code and the point is never like you know this type of community control that I think a lot of people want and so I think it's just always going to be a balance that like Matt's always going to have to tread which is like I want everyone to make money I want everything to be free I want you know the Best of Both Worlds and like you know hey we're here it's worked out so far uh growth is still happening so you know obviously it's something right is happening yeah I want to illustrate this sort of evolution of business uh on the front and center and the stage and we're all kind of working together this is the same uh state of the word um presentation by uh the late great Alex King when he took the stage uh who um you know started crowd favorite now run by Kareem maruchi and his team uh but Alex King was certainly one of of uh the WordPress greats um there was a bunch of Clips when I went down memory lane of Matt sort of recognizing uh core developers and you know it's like three four you know year after year and everything was just so tightnit again difficult to to to wrap your head around like this uh connection we had to the community here we go luk back while crowd favorite typically works on slightly larger projects The Help Center has designed to pick up the slack things that we were getting a lot of people emailing in with questions small customizations things like that that we were having a hard time fitting in with our other commitments we launched the help center which is I believe the First on call WordPress support and customization Center or you can actually just uh pick up a phone call somebody and get an answer right there and um everything's uh low cost um and this launched a month and a half ago and we're already looking to hire U two additional developers cuz it's doing very well um good success story of being able to make a living and support people with [Applause] WordPress Mark samanski can you imagine putting your phone number out there and having anyone on the internet call you for WordPress support uh or do you do that now I mean I think my phone number probably is out there not my main I got a few phone numbers but yeah no that I wouldn't recommend that no yeah absolutely not um but C to anybody that that has tried cuz I mean again I I know I've said this before probably in different episodes but like the WordPress Meetup thing I think this is kind of like adjacent to that I know it's not exactly one to one with that clip there but that is another reason why WordPress I think has gotten so so large because you had this situation where and I only got into it recently because I know the people that like started you know have had them for so long but that I feel like that was a such a huge thing I think it's died off quite substantially especially in these last couple months but like just PE the amount of people that were willing to donate their free time to like helping random people using Wordpress was pretty incredible and I think it was incredibly influential for people not like just looking at WordPress and then just stopping using it and then kind of moving from that you know maybe they get some business from that or whatever if people don't want to like do it themselves but just so much so much Community Driven stuff and you only get that when you really have that more of a Kumbaya campfire feeling I feel like I don't know if you get that as much with like a you know something that's more I don't know SAS oriented in a way which I'm not saying is where WordPress is specifically going but that would be my thoughts on that but yeah a lot of businesses came out from uh 2008 2009 2010 thinking about this before man like the the growth of Wordpress wasn't just the software um I had kind of WR wrote about this in my monologue but I had to like shorten it and really get really get it hyperfocused I just wanted a couple minutes there like if you're starting something new as like a WordPress adjacent a WordPress alternative you know come get this new thing and let's get out of this like this WordPress Community number one like okay that's fine that's great that's awesome I haven't really seen anyone like pave the path or present the blueprint to a WordPress alternative and I think that maybe the thinking is the phrase like word press alternative or WordPress without WordPress minus you know now with 100% less fat you know or whatever it is that that folks are doing like there are alternatives like um the I think it's called is it classic press right where it's just WordPress without the without Gutenberg and the in the site editor whatever okay that that's cool but I think if you're truly looking for this movement to get away from it it needs a few things it needs that that Central uh idea that is just an experience that is well beyond WordPress something new something fresh it can't just be WordPress minus this one thing or WordPress with governance okay like no one's going to jump behind that right it has to be this thing that is just a beautiful experience that is I mean maybe it's a part of maybe board press is the core of it maybe you're forking word press but really you got to have this person or this group of individuals that makes this this this awesome thing that people want to get behind first that's how WordPress was able to you know accomplish what it did because it looked at the the landscape and it was like we're making this open source thing that is an alternative and it's great and let's let's get behind this and then the community came um and that's what's really going to like get these things off the ground not the fact that you're putting together infrastructure and [ \_\_ ] G GitHub read me files okay big deal right you need to have people bought into this awesome thing that you're building first and foremost uh and I think that's the biggest challenge um for anyone starting anything new Brian any thoughts I mean pull the P pull the pin throw the grenade at you I think that the internet of 20 years ago is not the internet of today so like you're not going to get we're not going to see a new crop of like crowd favorites and tups and and things like that because like that already happened that Wave It's happen in the internet that we thought we had in 2003 2004 is like completely different than what the internet is now where everyone is using it it's very ubiquitous it's built into all of our daily lives and stuff so like that was a good wave that people had and like good for them but if you want to talk about like a fork or an alternative I mean I personally think what it the thing that you would need is you would need a Visionary person that is has their face and their ideas very outlined that people can get behind because I think like you said like throw some ideas oh better governance no block edit or whatever I mean that's fine but like I don't think people are going to trust that I think if you had a bunch of community like heads of businesses come together and like be like this is a vision we've outlined we're creating the new WordPress and they have their faces and stuff to it yeah maybe people will follow that you can connect with that you can you build something on that but otherwise I think most people are are are just going to kind of come back into WordPress and realize hey I can do whatever I want with this thing and nobody can take it away from me and uh and it's works with every piece of software out there and there's a million developers who know it really well I mean I just don't think we're going to replace that with something new those clips I was just showing were from 2009 that uh we're going to head into 2010 focused on like that through line of uh of business and and we'll kind of see it a little bit hopefully you can kind of spot it but in 2008 2009 we they there was a lot of focus on on this growth of Wordpress um naturally again as I was hinting at before it was a great alternative and also the year uh the years that WordPress was exploding was also the time that a lot of us were [ \_\_ ] experiencing what the internet was like how to this internet thing is amazing like look what we can do with it and here comes WordPress it was a right time for WordPress to evolve uh because you just had startup after startup software after software I mean the whole world was innovating at that time financial crisis people looking for Alternatives this was just the right time for WordPress to strike and you can kind of see it if you're crazy enough to watch these presentations in succession like I did um to kind of see that that Evolution here's a clip 2010 San Francisco uh 80% make money with WordPress in the room um I don't know if we'll see that anymore these days here we go so other interesting facts about people in this room besides being you know uh more attractive and smarter than the general population but and I also just want to add uh super quick that Matt's personality again not to dilate on Matt uh his jokes uh were much better early days and then they got a lot more corporate and a lot more cringe as as yours went on I I just I don't know I don't know what it is but here we go 80% of you are making money from WordPress uh right now which is kind of incredible um the top three are some of you 22% so 1/5th of the people in this room WordPress is your day job which blows my mind cuz yeah oh yeah okay good I was like uh oh question I'm not ready for those [Laughter] yet uh that's you know we have what 600 people in this room right now so that means you know one5 of y'all are doing it custom development 18% and then hosting 12% and I've been totally Blown Away by the bre and depth of the sites being created lately so just a little to seeing that evolution of business and how that was a core uh tenant in in the conversations it's going to be in uh stark contrast to another clip I'm going to play in a moment but uh to keep things moving here also same year same presentation for those of you curious how we get a new theme every year here's why default theme every year no now here's why what I'm personally most excited about in WordPress 3.0 is that we have a new theme [Applause] I didn't realize this but it has been 5 years since we introduced cubric to the world and it it delighted us with its rounded corners and it cited us with its blue gradients but it's tired and so we want to give it a little bit of a break it is no longer going to be to the Fon work press we have a new one called 2010 um which I think is absolutely beautiful the work of Matt Thomas Ian Stewart um it's really really exciting I took the photos uh the 2010 theme is names as such because I never want us to go five years again without doing a new theme so by calling it 2010 hopefully in 2011 we're really embarrassed and we do another one and that's the idea we want to do a new default theme every year 2011 uh when you when we get to these get to these clips before we get there uh 2011 was definitely the year where I think you you you see a pivot in s certainly Matt uh and we'll play some anecdotal information as to why um but when I look back at 2010 2009 I mean I believe I was there in 2010 I can't remember um man just like people laughing right like people like just love the content man we we were there like I remember sitting in that room and and people just running up the stage to to ask the questions they they want to ask about WordPress uh people were just excited and really engaged uh you know Slide by slide and and and really the other point here is like what I'm trying to illustrate against the backdrop of 2024 is those were the days I guess right like I have nothing else to say other than man I miss the community and probably also trying to prove to myself that this is why this year has been so difficult right looking back at these moments and being like damn really miss those days days um but also being able to look back and go ah I can kind of see how this thing was evolving to this uh to this situation Mark are you surprised uh This is How we get uh a new theme every year did you know how that was how it all rolled out I didn't know the origin story honestly back then it kind of makes sense you didn't want to know but now you know I mean it makes sense I I don't think that's a bad decision I just there there's a couple things rattling around in my head and again it's more headyy than probably you know the typical WordPress conversation but that's who I am so like first of all that guy on that on those clips is like orders of magnitude more likable like just it's unbelievable like just super personable like like witty like kind of just like and again it's not to disrespect where I'm at is now just it's just it's just super interesting to see that you know again just the the change and I would love to hopefully have more Clips we can kind of continue to see some of that some of that evolve but more so for me you make a really good point about how it has changed the feeling of it has changed like there's so much excitement and again if you look at it objectively it makes total sense when something is growing and people are excited about it and it's getting momentum the Snowballs rolling down the hill like it it it makes total sense that people are excited about it and they want to contribute to it and they want to do more things they want to go to events they want to do all that it's not surprising what I would love to like explore we don't have to do it right now but what I what comes to me is like not from the WordPress angle because I don't know if it can be fixed hopefully it can and whatever that that spark could be reunited but how do you sustain that spark like what happened throughout if we could continue to pinpoint those things where that spark just got like littled and Litt and continued for that to happen where it's not like that anymore it doesn't feel like that and obviously maybe with the maturity of software just generally starts to happen but I always try to think of can we think of some comparisons can we think of anything that's similar like how has Apple been able to sustain obviously it's a little boring now with iPhones but there still like have people like knocking down the door I feel like just as another random thing that's Tech related or something like that like how do how do other companies that have gone through this thing not open source to like corporate you know huge corporate thing but like orders of magnitude even larger than WordPress that are still getting all of that uh you know just like I don't know interest and people loving their products and just buying them almost blindly I don't know if it's just you just take over the whole Market or what the deal is there um but that's just me thinking out loud because I'm I'm looking at the situation I'm like I don't love where it's at right now I think a lot of people don't what went wrong how could we like learn from that how could we fix it maybe but really just like what like we're observing the whole thing what what happened and why did it happen yeah I mean I I you know obviously WordPress just blows away the competition I believe I had blew away the competition still does you know from a numbers game um I think I have a clip in here where we or he highlights uh that growth I believe I saved it um we will get an opinion from Dre from Drupal on his sort of quick take on on open source and I think uh I didn't have the whole clip of Matt uh talking uh further but uh you'll hear some of the essence of like how tre's approaches open source and I think um in contrast to Matt um it's been it's been kind of interesting um let's go to 2011 I think this is where we really start to see uh the shift and these presentations become a lot more branded a lot more automatic Matt starts injecting a lot more of like maybe his own personal growth uh into these uh into these conversations this is a longer one um but I'm going to stop it halfway through we start to see Matt um injecting a lot of like this uh his own like personal growth milestones and like yeah I don't know I'll just make it really simple like you should read this book you know you should live life with this saying and it's like the turn of 2011 is probably and somebody look it up on crunch base I don't know if that's when like the money all came into automatic but my God he started really sort of um you know pushing like his his mantras on not only the software but uh folks in the room starting with you know like every great leader uh cares about how he looks straw pole last year we asked where people use wrong clip I was was say was it is it I didn't pull that one uh there it is I didn't pull that one I didn't uh I didn't clip it we he did start 2000 he did start the 2011 uh talk with addressing uh how his how his hair looked um and you know I don't think most people cared about that so let's just go right to the the business side of 2011 in his presentation um showing the growth of Wordpress we straw portal last year we asked whether people using Wordpress as a Blog as a CMS or for both so who first who's using Wordpress just for a Blog raise your hand who's using it just as a CMS and who is using it both as a Blog and a CMS so we found a full 92% of the people who took the survey using Wordpress as a CMS it's an incredible number three years ago this may have been 5% um I would say that the transformation to Wordpress as the CMS is nearing full penetr like full we're almost done uh which is pretty exciting so only 8% are using it just for a Blog we also asked I thought you guys would be interested in this um about hourly rates how much do people charge per hour to build WordPress sites we got a huge range from $5 to $2,000 per hour it's like building websites for Elliot Spitzer or something I don't know we took out the outliers on both ends and we found these averages and average of 58 and a median of $50 uh it'll be interesting this is we're just starting this number we're going to start doing this survey every year I'm very curious to see where this number moves over time as WordPress sites become more CMS like more complex and what you guys are able to do becomes more advanced we had a full 2,800 people that said they were making their living from WordPress about 16% of the people who took the survey um that's more people than are employed at many web companies I mean it's actually kind of amazing when you think of the number of jobs being created by WordPress uh and we don't know what this actual number is we don't know how many people didn't take the survey uh so hopefully over time we'll get a little bit better sense of that if you are not currently Mak your living from WordPress but you would like to there are some great resources we got jobs. wordpress. net codep poet if you're a higher end consultant WP candy Pros is a great place to list yourself uh woo jobs wo themes has a great job Board of course automatic always hiring $50 an hour uh as the as the average back then was uh was quite amazing I'm sure that number has changed slightly or maybe it hasn't on the global stage maybe not I'm not sure uh Brian do you know do do they still is that part of the uh the survey still is getting feedback on hourly rate do you know if that's a thing still I don't I don't think so I don't think they ask that I'll be honest I get survey fittig I don't really fill it out every year just yeah yeah I mean I think I I I've seen you know that that again that step away of like caring how the community is making money with WordPress to just like WordPress uh which again I'm not saying it's a bad thing just trying to like highlight the through line of we started all together and now I think we're you know the presentations are uh much further apart these days from uh from where we where we came from let's continue on with the growth of Wordpress again back in 2011 uh Matt highlighting some of these metrics and finally I want to talk a little about WordPress growth uh and the first first two days of 3.2 we add over half a million downloads of the software it's the fastest velocity of upgrades and downloads of Wordpress ever this was WordPress 3.2 gers one we've now passed over 200 million plug-in downloads and to go back to the 88.5% prediction from last year WordPress has now reached 14.7% of all websites in the world are running WordPress but we dug in and we actually found a cooler stat that has not been published before so this is the first time this is going to be talked about so we worked with some outside firms to look at active new domains in the US and basically all new domains being created and we found that out of every hundred domains that were created new domains active domains 22 of them were running WordPress which means our adoption in New websites is even higher than our current existing uh market share so this means that direction that workplace is going is not just growing but it's accelerating so as I like to say at the end of these the state of the word is strong the state of the word is strong I don't know if we'll ever get that feeling back that was sort of how that one you know capped out uh a lot of Applause uh a lot of again a lot of great feelings in those rooms um and I think that uh We've sort of moved on from that clearly moving forward forward uh Mark any thoughts on those stats from back in the day I mean starting to see the evolution and how far WordPress has come and from 2011 even just to 2024 yeah I think the takeaway there for me is don't grow out your hair uh you do it's just some sort of correlation there between like a change in Persona I feel like you I could I could tell just from that video um I mean I say that in justest but also like there's definitely I feel like a a noticeable shift from 2010 2011 I wish wish I was there I wish my my past year I was there in 2010 to like understand that cuz I feel like I don't know what else happened there but it maybe you wouldn't know because maybe a lot of stuff was happening behind the scenes but I just feel like there did seem like a a noticeable shift like we were saying before we before you rolled the clip like there's more a little more corpor um which is fine in my opinion but I I I do think that the you can you could be corporate and and and kind of still like give a a very likable and just and still stay like I feel like when again when he had the short hair uh you know it was it was more like we're we're building this thing it's going well um you know I'm just kind of being honest with you and may but maybe this is the thing that you have to do as you continue to grow I don't know I'm just that's uh but there's definitely a noticeable shift there and then and maybe it is correlated too with the stats like oh we're 14% of the internet now we have to act a little different which definitely is fair I don't know when in all this like actual money started to be like invested or anything like that I don't I don't know if we have all those details but um I understand things change it's just uh it's interesting to see see it kind of in real time here as we look back jetpack was also talked about in 20111 and sort of like the synergies of taking that com experience to.org and probably started to lay the initial groundwork uh for the monetization scheme for automatic again nothing wrong with it um but this is when we first started to hear about it there's been an innovation loop I like to say that innovation in core but gets innovation in plugins and there's been some very cool stuff happening in plugging in themes the last year uh the Shelf theme is one that I really like uh as you can see it's sort of uh has it uses post formats very interestingly and actually has a cool horizontal design that can go back and forth which things like the on Swipe plugin which creates a tablet uh formatted version almost Flipboard like of any blog any WordPress powered blog in the world so things like job roller uh which is this is running a theme from App themes it's running on woo themes which really uses WordPress not as just a blog or CMS engine but actually as an application platform that they built something completely novel on and then finally this just came out a few weeks ago if you guys seen presswork it's basically a new theme framework that in addition to having you know sort of all the HTML 5 goodness and everything actually takes it so you have front and editing you can go to the front of your theme and drag and drop widgets around and move the content area it's a lot of fun the plugin side we saw some innovation in caching super cash and W3 total cach doing great SEO is doing well as well we got WP SEO and the all-in one SEO pack blogs more backed up and secure than ever backup buddy for backups and Vault press for both security and backups and something that we started talking about first in March at South by Southwest um one of the thing that has aged me quite a bit this year is we've been working on feature parody quite a bit automatic has between the two things we call wordpress.com com.org this say man man ested itself in a plug and release a march called jetpack which shows part of the vision but not all there yet but the idea is that once you're in word press you're part of the family we've always said that but there's always been trade-offs between the two whether you want to host it yourself and have complete control you lose some of the social features or some of the you know Community features um you shouldn't need to and that's what's going to be happening this year hopefully early predictions or I mean early signals uh again uh I stopped at 2011 because there's far too much content for me to consume uh on any given day uh but uh 201 again being that pivotal moment for me where uh you sort of like noticing all of these trends of uh these discussions becoming much more about uh you know some of uh of course the evolution of of WordPress but you started to hear less and less over time I feel about like all of us kind of building this thing and um I didn't really get that out of the 2024 um you know word Camp let's ended on talking about uh 2024 did you guys get a chance to watch it do you have any particular thoughts or comments with what you saw in this year's state of the word um I guess I'll start it was a par for the course presentation for me the only thing that I was you know ultimately interested in was uh uh matias's presentation on like where guten b or where WordPress is going um block building I mean inline commenting and collaboration B biggest thing for me is that sort of Wordpress for everyone kind of thing like can it be for everyone should it be for everyone uh build develop design right I think were the four things there um none of it was really focused on a particular user like I didn't hear humans or you know for the community it was just like we're doing this thing so anyone can kind of build this thing massive lofty goal I don't know if you can be everything for everyone is the biggest uh the biggest head scratcher for me uh Brian I'll give it to you first uh any takeaways from this year um yeah I mean I think the big thing is I think you're starting to see a shift in strategy for a few things I think number one is you're making me nauseous here I think number one is uh since this one and the earlier like uh open Office hours with Mary hubard I think there's a lot more will to admit that a lot of the like roadmap decisions of Wordpress are happening inside automatic and that they're taking like a firmer control like you know Matias came out and said hey we're going to be doing responsive design and we're going to have filterable breakpoints which is not anywhere in GitHub it's not anywhere in Social in fact he's been pretty adamant that he wouldn't do breakpoint based responsive in the past so that's a big structural shift I think we're all happy about it I think everybody wants to see responsive design in core but clear clearly there was a huge conversation to get to this point and nobody knows you know how that conversation happened and so I think we're there's that piece as we're kind of coming to terms with okay a lot of this stuff is coming from internal conversations and automatic and they're going to be more firmly leading the charge on all that and then I think the other big shift is is really away from he I feel like jetpack used to be a bit more of a centerpiece and I think what jetpack tried to do was basically give managed hosted managed hosting solutions to any WordPress site but now managed hosts have really given you all those Solutions you don't really need jetpacks backups or security anymore because every poost kind of provides that themselves and so I think that's going to be another strategic shift is like what is the role of Jetpack because if that's not really needed on most WordPress sites um what is it going to be so I think those are like the two maybe big takeaways that I had from what they focused on and and probably what we'll see different in WordPress going forward Mark is the future bright for WordPress uh that's a loaded question um there's some nuances I mean it's my catchphrase uh yeah I don't I don't see it going away or anything um from to say the word I didn't watch every minute of it I watched your read your well I didn't read your blog post I had my computer read it to me because I don't read but uh I uh I i' I'd Echo what Brian said about kind of like Matias is piece of it I and and also you said Matt like I think that I think the best thing WordPress could do given all the things that have happened this year and throughout its life but specifically where it seems like the trajectory is going is to just double down on the idea that this is no no longer the campfire thing and what that means to me is that you treat it more like a product in a sense even though it's a project don't want to trigger anyone there like in the sense of you can throw stuff in GitHub I think I sent you a voice memo on this map recently like you can throw stuff in GitHub you can do all that like there's definitely going to be still like open source s uh like um you know contribution and everything but at the at the end of the day it's what automatic says like which it seems like it's kind of been like that people have definitely said that for a while but it hasn't been like fully like uh embraced understood or like announced I guess is a way I feel like there's been a lack of transparency specifically on that to a degree from what I've seen um um I think most people just want to know what's going on like the like the truth of like how things operate they may disagree with it but is but as long as they're not kind of like there's not like the smoke and mirrors Blurred Lines type thing that we've always seen with like.org Doc like all that sort of stuff I think if that's if that is made if people are made aware of that then at least they have something they know what the real reality is and then they can be mad or happy one way or the other and I do think that we're kind of moving that way I don't think it's an easy transition because it's uh 20 years of you know heart soul Blood Sweat and Tears and I'm empathetic to all that but I do think that that's probably where it's going seems like it's the only natural path what happens because of that I ultimately think there's going to be some strife and I don't think word press is going to go away I think it's going to be some rough patches it's going to look different on the other side but we're already seeing where it's going to look like and if you're at all future thinking you can kind of play it out um but I think the future is bright but it's a little it's going to be a little dim here maybe for 2025 we'll see what happens yeah definitely an interesting uh chapter ahead for 2025 in WordPress um let's go around the horn just one more call to action of where folks can find both of you on the web uh we'll take some Q&A and then we're going to play it out with uh just a clip because we're far uh far over time uh folks uh still watching go ahead drop your questions uh and comments and we'll see if we can grab those Mark where can folks find you to say thanks yeah thank you for having me Matt uh just uh MJS mj. bio all my links are there I'm on YouTube uh got some cool stuff coming on the website Partnerships things like that lot of cool com content coming appreciate it having you guys thanks so much Brian cords uh Brian chords.com and yeah you can find me in most places whatever the next Twitter clone is I'll be on that one too so this guy web masters. FM let's not forget to uh pump the the the podcast webmasters FM let's go to some Q&A real quick as we played out in the last couple minutes here Amber Hines it's too bad they stopped doing that survey Studio press used to do an annual one to now it's just the admin bar uh but that skew is low um yeah I I haven't seen an admin bar survey result in a while but I haven't really been um uh looking for like that freelancer data except uh obviously until until recently Curtis Morrow asks is anyone talking about the automatic for agency push um automatic uh one of my last sort of monologues that Brian enjoyed I guess was uh I call it WordPress now with lowercase p and that's when they sort of announced uh their build a WordPress website for like $500 or something like that at wordpress.com um I think these are just like natural things that uh any larger organization has to do to um you know get look all of us are trying to get into WordPress agencies like I want people to listen to that podcast so WordPress agency owners Mark wants you know content for it um Brian wants to maybe work for these types of agency like I think it's like a natural thing it's not anything that I think is uh like super conspiracy they're building tools right you can buy this wordpress.com stuff um you know that's just the natural Advantage automatic has um any other comments or questions coming in there are so many sites in WP for people to change that would be expensive yes yes uh Justin Jackson thanks for hanging out today uh make sure to unmute Mark uh that wasn't Mark I'm I'm flipping a hardware loopback Hardware loop back button that's the kind of podcaster that's the kind of podcaster I am you know why that's what I do uh let's see uh WP tonic asks I'm I'm witty right Mark yes absolutely jonan yes uh and a bunch of other comments from below everybody thanks for uh hanging out today we're going to play out this last clip I think this is an interesting way to uh Justin Hardware L is my DJ name uh I am still a huge fan of Open Source I think we're just in this weird chapter now with WordPress I'm still rooting for open source WordPress um this is a clip from it was it says a year ago on wordpress.com official channel it's uh Drees the founder of um Drupal uh Mike little and uh Matt all on stage it was the first time they were ever all in the same room together um talking about their stuff in open source but this is uh Dre's uh take on open source which I wholeheartedly agree with this is what sort of makes me want to show up every day for WordPress um you know but then it's like capped off by just like the sort of like little rib jabbing that I think Matt has been doing um for many years but certainly now an allout push against WP engine and you can see this Stark difference I think from from folks who really care about like open source and the open web and you know running uh their companies behind it everybody thanks for watching today the wp minute.com subscribe join that mailing list subscribe to the channel we'll see you in the next video Dre Bart on open source Innovation open source is both of these things for me at least and I think the other thing to talk a little bit more about Evolution that came to mind is like how open source is almost darwinian if you think about how corporations in inovate to have 100 engineers and they to be very specific about what they're going to work on to maximize the outputs and so let's say both WordPress and Drupal we have let's say a photo album Plug-In or module and in fact we probably have 30 right versus if you're a company it would be crazy to develop 30 photo modules or plugins it would just be insane you would never do that you would have one and you would try your best to make it the best one you can ever buil but the beauty about open source is you have all of these people that can contribute their own version and even Fork existing versions to make it better and eventually just like Evolution and their in in you know darwinian Evolution the best Solutions bubble to the top and bad Solutions tend to disappear and it's a great way of innovating it's a beautiful way of innovating it's open market a lot of ways and a meritocracy of ideas can happen that's why I've never like Dro and war press have never had beef ever we've beefed with proprietary software before when they've stolen our code like Ricks or other things, A Look Back at WordPress 2024, WP Minute Tutorials, 01jfd12xsm5e3k1040g2z8dqsv.