This Week in WordPress #358  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: This Week in WordPress #358 - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[358]] [[collaboration]] [[community]] [[wordpress]] - Summary: This Week in WordPress #358 - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsNQf7VMVbM It's time for This week in WordPress, episode number 358, recorded on Monday the 8th of December, 2025. My name is Nathan Wrigley and today I'm joined by co-host Michelle Fchett. I'm also joined by Dinda Sinc and by Mark Benzerane. Thank you to Mark and Dinda for stepping in at the 11th hour. It is a WordPress podcast and so what do we talk about? Well, this week a lot about WordPress. Apart from talking about the weather at the beginning, we then get stuck into oodles of content about WordPress 6.9. This is the latest version of WordPress which has dropped recently. And there's bags to talk about. Not only are there loads of articles out there on the web instructing you of all the different bits and pieces that have been included in this update, but there was lots of commentary around the state of the word address given by Mullenweg recently as well. After that, we get into some other different bits and pieces, some community news. We talk about Black Friday deals. There's some brand new plugins out there in the WordPress space which I think you might like to look at. And obviously we get into a conversation about AI. It's the year 2025, so [music] we always do. It's all coming up next on this week in WordPress. This episode of the WP Builds podcast is brought to you by GoDaddy Pro, the home of manage WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL, and 247 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. Every week I say I'm going to change that music and every week I completely fail to do it. And and as soon as it be >> I just wrote I just wrote the lyrics though. >> Have you >> WordPress talking about WordPress? [laughter] Anyway, >> like it'll be next time. Okay, I'm glad of that. No, it needs to change, but I always forget to do it. It's like bottom of the laundry list of things to do. Here we are. Episode 358 of This Week in WordPress. That's uh one more than last week and one less than next week. There we go. We're going to be having um a little bit of a break over this. That is how numbers work. >> I know. Yeah. Add one, take away one. We're going to be having a little break. So, we got a couple more episodes, I think, before the Christmas break, something like that. And uh quite a lot's happened this week. So, usually this podcast kind of runs a load of topics. We go through lots of different things. I've put quite a few things on the show notes just in case we don't have enough to say about WordPress 6.9, but I think it's quite likely that we'll dwell on WordPress 6.9 quite a lot. Um, I'll first of all introduce co-host for today. That is Michelle Fchett over there. How you doing, Michelle? >> I am quite well, thank you. Good. >> Even though it's only 7° Fahrenheit here today. >> Yes. And um and I have to say a great big thanks to >> negative numbers for you all. >> Well, I don't even know what that means, but it sounds like a bad amount of degrees. Um Yeah. Um Michelle isn't supposed to be here. Uh I say that in the in the nicest possible way. Um and that is because we we had an alternative arrangement of guests and two of them uh today have had to cancel. So two of these guests I'm incredibly grateful for sort of stepping in at the last minute and Michelle was one of them. Uh Jess Frick was going to be joining us but she's unable to at the last minute. So Michelle is joining us instead and I'm really grateful for you stepping in at the last minute. I'll just go through Michelle's bio. She is the executive director of post status and in addition to her work there she is also the podcast barista at WP coffee talk co-founder of underrepresented in tech and WP speakers creator of WP career pages also involved in sponsor me WP co-founder of speed network online she writes so she's an author and influencer and a frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress and wider tech events she lives near Rochester New York and she likes to take photographs of nature. If you want to go to the one website to find out more, it's meet.online and uh yeah, thank you once more for joining us. Appreciate it. >> It's my pleasure. >> The other person who stepped in at the last minute is Dinda. Deinda Sinc. Thank you, Dinda. I appreciate it. >> You're welcome. >> Dinda was is well Tim West. I don't even know who that is. Who is that? [laughter] Tim Tim Nash. Apologies Tim. Uh Tim Dash was supposed to be joining us, but he's not feeling quite right. He's under the weather. And again, uh you know, Dinda sort of stepped in at the 11th hour, and I'm incredibly grateful uh for that. And here's Tim. Uh oh dear, I'm really struggling with names today. Here's Dinda's bio. Um a digital creative who loves to create online spaces powered by WordPress. He's been in the ecosystem for more than 18 years and he's focusing on creating websites, digital product courses, coaching, and consulting. He is the founder of the wpweekly.com, which is a quick simple newsletter for WordPress users. Uh there's a few newsletters that I subscribe to in the WordPress space to crib content for this show and the WP WP weekly is one of those. I I I think that's uh that's that's a good thing, right? >> Yeah. Amazing compliment. [laughter] >> Yeah. Well, it comes out on a Monday just before this show comes out. So, it's kind of ideally ideally time. >> I live in India. If I was living in UK, then it would have been a problem because >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's kind of the perfect way to start my week. I just sort of read it, you know, first thing in the morning with my mug of coffee, out it comes and uh I'm off to the races. And so, yeah, I appreciate all that you do. I know that stuff like that, you know, it's like a labor of love a bit, but also I guess it's um helping your business out and things, but it's really credible. You should go and check it out. Like we said, the URL is the so you have to put the the in the wpely.com. No hyphens or anything weird like that. The wpweekly.com. Go check it out. Subscribe. And um that over there, the person coughing, that's Mark. That's Mark Benzane. How you doing, Mark? >> I'm peachy. How are you? >> Yeah, good. Um, Mark is not living in a box. This is just how he appears every time he's on the show. Something weird. >> I spent a good 35 seconds last week trying to get rid of that box and it still isn't working. I I looked at AI. I have like done all the research and and it says, "Oh, yeah, this will work." No, it doesn't. >> Embrace the box. Go with the box. >> I think what it boils down to is I just should buy a new camera. >> I think Yeah, the aspect ratio is wrong. Mark. Yeah, Mark is the only guest who I was predicting, but I woke up this morning. So, uh, thank you, Mark, for joining us. Um, >> and ironically, I'm on the list of backups in case you need a backup. So, I could do both right now. >> Yeah. Okay. So, [laughter] you that would be hysterical. If you wear two different hats, you could be the backup guest of one minute, swap it out for the other one. So, let's read Mark's bio. Mark Benzane has been around the WordPress world long enough to remember when everybody thought a custom post type was wizardry. I still think it is. He's a marketing lead and partnership manager at MainWP where he wrangles newsletters, partnerships, and the occasional existential crisis about plug-in change logs. Before that, he ran word camps, helped grow server press tenfold, and even survive government tech support, proving that he can debug both websites and bureaucracies. That's no mean fee. These days, if he's not connected to the main WP community, you'll find him riding his ebike to work, which he insists is both eco-friendly and a perfectly valid excuse for being late to Zoom calls. [laughter] Did you ride it this morning? >> I did not. And it's funny because last night Gina said to me, "Are you riding your bike in tomorrow?" I said, "Are you crazy?" >> Yeah, [laughter] it's like crazy temperature. And what time is it where you live? It's like 5:30 in the morning >> at the moment. It's 6:09 a.m. So, I'm normally up around 4:00 or 4:30, but I'm not awake at 4:00 or 4:30. So, you know. >> Okay. Stucking around until >> Are you drinking coffee? Like, I'm drinking coffee. >> I've already had coffee. This is just plain vodka. I mean, water. [laughter] So, >> love it. Okay. And that is the nature of this this podcast. It's all about being a bit silly, having a good time, and uh and reading the comments that drop in. If you do feel like adding some comments, we would love that. Honestly, it really keeps this whole show going. It's most commendable. Anybody that does, I'll just give you the the skinny on how that works. Uh the best place to go if you want to comment on this is probably here if you're confused cuz this is going out. It goes out into a variety of different platforms. I think LinkedIn has failed. I got a little warning in the dialogue that said LinkedIn has failed. At this point, there's nothing I can do to amend that. So, it's like if you're on LinkedIn, you're not even going to hear this. But there you go. It failed. But it usually goes out on LinkedIn and Facebook and X and places like that. So if you're watching this, if you comment in any place apart from YouTube, we don't get them because the platforms increasingly lock that stuff down. So the the the comments will just be stuck in that platform and we won't see them. So if you head here, wpbuilds.com/live, we've embedded the YouTube comments and we will get those so we can put those on the screen and what have you. or you could just go to the wpbuilds YouTube channel. But uh wpbuilds.com/live. If you're logged into Google, that's great. We'll get the comment. However, if you don't have a Google account or mistrust Google for some reason, there's a little button inside the video top right. It says live chat. If you click on that, you don't need to be logged into anything. You can just comment and uh we'll get that as well. Okay. So, that's probably the best way to do that. There's a couple of people that have done that already. That's really nice. Thank you very much. James Laauo says, "Hello and good morning." Very nice to have you with us. That's really nice. Hello, says an and Blet. Thank you very much for joining us. Hello again, says Gen. I'm sorry is all I could say. I I don't know how to phonetically pronounce your name. If you want to write it phonetically for me. >> Wasn't it Gerald or Gerard? >> Okay. It probably was, but I have the memory of a cushion, so uh you know, >> you can remind us. >> Yeah. Thank you. Hello Gerard or yeah let us know your name and apologies Gerard >> getting it wrong and this is I do know Marcus so that's all right he's running out of Mondays in 2025 so are we but happy for this one I can and that he can see us all that's really nice we've got Jonathan Overall WP plugins A to Z good morning from a wet and dreary Vancouver Island oh no >> where it is also six o'clock in the morning [laughter] >> yeah here's a blast from the past we used to do the weather sort of stuff on this show every time kind of died to death a little bit, but um Michelle's telling us here we go. It's 7° Fahrenheitus. What? It's that -14 centrade. God, that's brutal. Michelle, don't go out. Stay where you are. >> I went on I didn't trust my brain, so I did the calculation online to figure out what the conversion was. >> That's horrible. That's >> And I've already been out and come back today. So, I might just >> And alive. God, in the UK because we have like fairly temperate weather, it never gets hot and it never gets really really really cold. If we get that kind of a cold spell, like it which might happen like once every three or four years, everything collapses like the whole everything just shuts down cuz nothing's built with that kind of tolerance in mind. When you live when you live in the Great Lakes region like I do, >> we can get upwards of 100° F in the summer and below zero Fahrenheit in the winter. So, it's been as as cold here as minus 20, which is probably like - 40 where you are. Um, >> you know, and and so, yeah, we get the very big R. People used to say to me, you can't complain about the winter if you also complain about the summer. >> And I say, I have a body that can complain about any extreme. [laughter] I don't like lava or dry ice. >> Okay. Okay. I think we can all agree on that. Um that it's a dry cold. >> It doesn't matter. It's just cold. [laughter] It just doesn't matter whether it's dry or not. >> It is true cuz your hands crack. It's just terrible. Yeah. >> I watched a video of somebody in your neck of the woods who took like a a a mug of coffee and took it outside and then started at the ground and poured it out whilst lifting the coffee mug up. It just made this arc of coffee which froze in >> Yes. >> That That's like >> which crystallizes almost immediately. Yeah. >> That's like Hoth out of Star Wars. That's not happening on Earth. That's happening on some other planet. That's amazing. Anyway, >> I bought this the bubbles like the kids blow bubbles. I bought bubbles to photograph when they freeze cuz bubbles will freeze outside. >> Do they go like ping pong balls in midair? Do they? Oh, that's >> No, [laughter] they just they crystallize and then Yeah, it's really cool. >> Anyway, here we go. We're not supposed to be talking about the weather. And it is. Wait, it is Gerard. I remember >> it is. It is Gerard. Look there. Look, it is Gerard. Hello. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Gank. [laughter] Your name is actually Gerard. I'm so sorry. >> I get I get extra points this week. >> Yeah, you do. You do. You get extra points. There you go. Look, and and loves Dinda's newsletter as well. Dinda's WP Weekly is one of my favorites, too, says. And that's really nice. Somebody Sorry, Dinda. Go on. >> Yes, I also do this. [laughter] >> Yeah, that's nice. U my full Oh, okay. Here we go. My full name is Gerard Van and Gank is my default. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. That makes sense. That's the the hand. >> Good to see you back again, Gerard. >> Yeah, thank you. Please keep coming each Monday. We love it. And make loads of comments. Send all of your friends and relations here. So, what are we up to? >> In No, we're not doing more weather. Um, [laughter] in theory, we're supposed to talk about WordPress. So, we will get on to that. Just a few bits of self-promotional stuff if that's okay. This is our website, wpbuilds.com. put your email into that little box and we'll send you two emails a week. One when we parcel this up as a podcast on a Tuesday and then we'll send you one on a Thursday. Our Thursday podcast Oh, wrong one. Our Thursday podcast is on episode number 448 and the most recent one was uh a chat with Dave Gray who's often on this show. So, you can go and check that out. He's got this really curious marketing initiative for one of his most recent plugins. He's got this really interesting idea of instead of selling it to end users, he's going to sell it directly to hosts and uh so that they can implement it on behalf of their customers, which I thought was a really interesting idea. We still have a Black Friday page despite the fact that Black Friday itself was gone. Uh increasingly Black Friday deals don't just stop at the end of Black Friday. I remember when I was a kid, Black Friday wasn't even a thing. And now it just goes on and on and on and loads of the deals are still going. So, if you go to wpbuilders.com/black and you sort of scroll down, every deal that's on the page is still alive. They sort of go off the page as they become inactive. So, you know, if you sort of search and filter for things, there's still quite a lot. I don't know, maybe there's a hundred or something still there. So, go and have a poke around if that's your thing. And one last bit of self-promotion is I had a chat with the lovely Toeer De Roia on the WP Tavern podcast this week and we talked about how he over many years in the WordPress space has been sort of like laying the groundwork for the bits and pieces that he's now doing. And by that I mean he's been building things in the open with no expectation of anything in return and then curiously something will come his way that he didn't anticipate. And so it's a a real a real community story about sort of doing things with no expectation of having your pockets lined or anything like that. So there we go. 196 four episodes to number 200. What should I do on episode 200? That's a bit different. >> You got any ideas? Any would you do anything at all? Hey, >> travel to Canada. >> Hang on. Let's go with Dinda first. Go on Dinda. travel to Canada. Minus 20° C is waiting [laughter] for you. >> I enjoyed on the podcast >> and Michelle will give you tips on how to deal with it. [laughter] >> Okay, that's that's not what we're going to do. Uh it's a [laughter] nice idea. What were you going to say, Mark? >> I was going to say let someone interview you. >> Oh, no. Nobody wants to hear that. >> Flip flip the script. >> No, no, no. >> I'll interview you on your podcast. >> No, no, no, no. Nobody wants to to hear that. [laughter] >> Talk later. >> No. No. Bad idea. Okay, moving on. That that [laughter] didn't go how I expected. >> Me neither. Me neither. I thought you'd embrace it. So, you know. >> Uh anyway, there it is. 196. Go check it out. Right. A couple of So, during the notes, during the notes stage of the show, when we set the show up, I uh issue some show notes and I offer the the guests an opportunity to mention something that they wish to mention. And uh it's awards this time around. Uh the first one is an award to one of our panelists. And then the next one is Deinda's uh WP awards page. Let's have a look at that in a minute. First of all, we mentioned this a few weeks ago when you were on the show. Michelle was up for an award last week. >> Didn't know that you were going to win it and you only went and won it. Well done. >> You know that phrase, always the bridesmaid, never the bride. >> Yeah. >> Well, up to this point, I've always been nominated but never won. And I can't say that anymore. So, very exciting. I I looked over the roster of the women who are also nominated in this and I thought, "Oh, there's no chance that I'll be winning this award at all. They're so accomplished." But I still was ready to take a screenshot just in case I came in bronze or something. Imagine the tears that streamed down my face when I saw my face. >> Nice. >> Yeah. >> Um, and so was this like an online vote kind of thing? Is this something that people voted for? Uh it was it was that was one component of it but then it was al also juried by about 30 people. >> Nice. >> So I was just blown away. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> And one of the nicest things is it wasn't WordPress. So it's like people outside of WordPress know who I am which made it really. So >> yeah. Yeah. That Well, honestly, massive congratulations. What I'll do is I will link in the show notes when you uh when you receive the the sort of newsletter the summary of all of these different bits and pieces. I'll put that in the community section and you can go and check out. But uh Michelle is the woman women tech global award winner for the year 20 >> 25. Very very cool. Um so obviously that was like a a wider awards thing. I'm guessing there was more than the the category that you won and we have we have a few of those in the WordPress space and Dinda runs one of them. When did um when did you sort of start this whole process this year? When did Dinda when did you start the um like the onboarding of the different people that were going to be featured in it and the different companies and plugins and things? >> Well, it's >> you open the nominations like in September, right? >> Yeah. Uh I usually keep nomination for two 2 months and 2 months for voting and then bam results and I was working like 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. yesterday to finish calculation of you know it's lot of work but yeah it's been like this is like fifth year running so I've learned a lot of things while running this and especially how to combat spam voting. Oh yeah, >> people post things. So I'm, you know, adding one layer after another every year. But yeah, spammers are very smart these days. So >> So bec So it's a form. It's an online form. And so how like obviously without revealing anything, what is the kind of ratio of spam to regular voting? Is it like one for one? Like is is half of the voting spam or do you think it's less than that or what? Like this year it was like almost 1,500 or so votes that I did not count or they were like thrown out of the like it's showing 5975 as total votes but total votes were exceeding 7,000 but you have to take them out. So first year I started I didn't have any you know clue whether anyone would vote like I'm talking about 5 years back. So it was party for everyone right so the next year I realized you know there has to be some checks and balances. So next year it was like not just you have to have a unique email address your IP address will also be checked and if you're again voting with different email address but from same IP address you won't be allowed to vote. So this year I actually ran the whole email. I submitted emails via a spam filter and you know took out all the votes that were there and there were quite a few related to certain brands. I would not name them but obviously it's not their problem. Maybe there is a problem but yeah slowly you know step by step I'm trying to figure out how to make it bulletproof. You know security is never 100%. So >> yeah [snorts] learning step by step. >> Yeah. Honestly, I can only say I tried really hard. Those 1500 votes that I put in, damn is all I could say. It never worked. Um, >> and you're still placed. You still >> That's [laughter] right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Um, and so any topline items obviously, you know, the the voting Oh, so there was this whole phase of like onboarding who you could vote for and then that then moves on to the step where everybody gets a chance to vote, which is what we've just been talking about, where the spam can potentially creep in. And then yesterday you figured out what the final results were and what have you. And these are the top Well, I guess we're looking at five things there. What are these that we can see there? These are the >> 1.3 you know. See, I still made a mistake. The rank match should be five and it's saying four now. >> Oh yeah. Yeah, I see that [laughter] too. >> You weren't tired, were you? >> Oh yes, >> I still fixed few mistakes. Some people actually DM me today in the morning like, "Oh, this link is not working. That link is not working." Uh yeah, I'll do that. I'll fix this. But so this is like top five among the total votes to a specific brand or product. And then if you scroll down, there are top three for every category. Like when I first started running, I used to write you know exact number of votes for every nominee. But then few people reached out to me and say that we love to participate but we don't feel we feel really embarrassed or bad when you put zero one against our you know number of vote. So I switched the whole thing. I think I said I will only put first six you know vote voted uh you know nominees under every category. I guess that gives a little better view at least because participation is more important than winning. Obviously winning is the thing but again so a lot of people submit it just to be participant and you know the funny thing the feedback I get from people who are subscribed to the newsletter obviously voting is one thing but they think they say that oh I discovered a new tool or a service in this category I didn't even know it existed right so >> that's kind of fun yeah >> so that's like indirect marketing I guess >> do [snorts] you do you exclude anybody at the point where the nominations for the things to be voted Ed on dropping. Do you ever get the impression that somebody is using this as a marketing channel or is that all fine? >> The only thing I exclude is if some service or product is not related to WordPress. Like a lot of SAS tools get submitted. Even for Black Friday deals, I never add them because again, if you're sticking with WordPress, you stick with WordPress. >> Yeah, I get the same thing, Deinda. So, I put that Black Friday deal page together and I get loads. Like the weirdest one this year was a company that was selling socks. uh just socks and I don't even know why they like why fill out the >> why they even fill out the form. I know it's probably a robot, right? But nevertheless, >> uh >> I had one at plus status for cruise like get a discount cruise and I was like I don't I don't see the WordPress part of this so sorry but no I I had several for mobile phone companies. >> Right. Right. >> A lot of mobile phones. Yeah. I don't know where it came from. >> Adding to the weirdness, I got it for toys as well. Toys. in the hope >> in the hope that people will uh will will actually include it. So these are the things that the top ones that we're looking at here 1 2 3 4 and four aka five um these are the ones I guess that received the overall most votes. So in first the thing that got more votes than any other thing was um ACF Pro >> the in second place was Woo Commerce. Ah fascinating. The third place was the WordPress community, the admin bar. The fourth was Elementor and then sorry. Yeah. Yeah, that is the fourth. And then the the fifth uh the second fourth. >> Yeah, the second fourth was uh was RankMath SEO. And then if you want more intel on all of the other bits and pieces, then you have to scroll down and it's done by uh category. So, for example, at the minute we're looking at gold, silver, bronze for WordPress themes, and it goes Astra, hello, the Elementors theme, uh, Cadence, and then page builders, and then block builders. That's that's things for Gutenberg form plugins and so on. And, uh, and the list goes on and on. So, I would recommend that you go go and check it out, scroll around. And I think I think at this point the most interesting thing if you haven't cast a vote would be exactly what Deinda said would just be to go and poke around and see what other curious new things you can find and do do all of these things here. So, for example, if I if I hover over, I don't know, one of these here, will that link out to the the item in question there? Homepage. Okay, great. Great. >> You're going to run it again? You should you should scroll down to the agency tools and see who took silver. >> Oh, okay. >> Just barely >> agency. Let's go for agency. >> We we uh although now I demand a recount. I think you should go and look at all [laughter] those bot. But >> demand a recount. >> I demand a recount means means you won't be on the list next year. >> That's right. [laughter] >> I take it back. I take it back. >> Yeah. They take it back. Uh so yeah, look there it is in second place main WP or in silver place I guess we should say is silver. Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh it's it's not its own URL. So it's at the WP weekly uh website. So it's wpweekly.comawwards uh2025. Uh you're going to run it in 2026 do you think? >> Absolutely. And the URL is also thewpawwards.com. So >> Oh, is [laughter] it apologies? Have a redirection. Yes. Uh lovely. Okay. So it does in fact work. >> This is amazing. You know I I not just [clears throat] running the words the interactions that you have in the background with people that is the most useful part of running this whole thing. Obviously they are like this is like shout voting and all that. Let me tell you in which country do we have fair voting? None. Right. So >> that's true. >> You expect to be fair voting in WordPress. [laughter] >> The um the curious thing is I can predict I think what next year's URL will be. It will be theweekly.com/awwards/2026. And the reason I say that is cuz I have a bit of a segue um which I wasn't expecting to have. And let me see if I can find it. Yeah, here we go. So, this is a little segue. I've just dropped this in. I wasn't expecting to do this, but I just saw that Ry had posted this. Um, and the reason there's a connection there is because we mentioned it last week. In the UK, uh, a misconfigured WordPress site led to this whole political brewhaha. I'll just very quickly summarize. We have this thing called the OBR, the Office for Budget. I've forgotten actually what it stands for. I've actually forgotten the acronym. That's really Oh, Office for Budget Responsibility. There we go. and it is responsible for like this bianual thing where they drop all the the information about like tax and pensions and rules around money and it's a big deal. Lots of people stop what they're doing and pay attention cuz it really matters. Unfortunately, the the document outlining all of that, which is supposed to be like really top secret, it leaked like 3 hours before the actual announcement and it turns out it was a WordPress website where somebody had used a plugin and misconfigured it so that you could guess the URL and it was what I've just done with Dinda's website. I changed the URL to 2026 and I'm anticipating that it'll be there next year. Well, that's exactly what somebody did. They they took what was available in March, took the word March out of the URL, replaced it with November, hit return, and to their surprise, they got the information. Anyway, like this is this is this is WordPress's like not not the best hour, and it's nothing to do with WordPress, which is the annoying thing. Um, it's now led to the the head of that organization in the UK resigning and it's led to unfortunately a lot of press coverage with the word WordPress in it that feels like WordPress is insecure and I don't really know how we recover from that in in the real world because obviously you know the organizations like this and the repository and your newsletter Deinda we're right inside the baseball but this is now this is now in the UK. UK normal press and they're sort of having a bit of a go at WordPress. They're not. They're just explaining like, you know, it's a misconfigured WordPress website, but the optics look really bad. I don't know if anybody has anything to add to that, but what a shame that that's uh that that in fact >> it's the issue with the person who was managing the website or the department who was managing, not the WordPress. Now, if you if you encounter a car crash, you don't blame the company of who made the car, right? >> Yeah. Yep. Yep. Well, I guess if it's self-driving, yeah, maybe. >> [laughter] >> But not um no but um I I would agree but you know how uh government works. The guy at the top and it was a guy in this case the guy at the top he he quit. He said you know the box stops with me. Um I you know it happened under my watch. So it has led to a major political realignment in that department. So it's kind of interesting. Anybody want to say anything about that one before I just say a few comments? No. Okay. Uh the first one is uh well done Marcus Bernette for spotting my Hoth comment. Nobody spotted that except you. Uh and he says Hoth. Uh fun fact, a reference [laughter] a Hoth reference on a Monday means it's going to be an amazing week. If you don't know what Hoth is, it's the really really cold planet on Star Wars where Luke Skywalker is on that like weird horselike creature. Uh and now that I've established my nerd credentials, I'm going to keep going. Here's another comment. Hello from us all in WP Bakery. Hello. Hello. Very nice to have you with us. Uh especially M Michelle. Congrats on your award. What else have we got? Oh, so this is the idea for episode number 200. Is it a roundup recap? Talk about how it started, how it evolved today, and other things. Thank you. These are all good ideas. Um and oh, Courtney, bless you. I hope it's nothing bad. She's in a Do chiropractors do they do they do? No, I'm thinking of corropodist. Chiropractors don't do feet, do they? Chiropractors do like >> bones and backs and stuff like that. Well, anyway, >> sometimes sometimes feet, but not exclusively. >> Yeah. Well, anyway, good luck, Courtney, with whatever it is. I hope that you're all right. And I expect it's time to put the phone down now, Courtney, and concentrate on the chiropractor. [laughter] [gasps] >> She's still in the chat, though. So, >> yeah, she is. She's still there. She says that URL thing can happen without any plugins. That's right. a default version of WordPress will deliver exactly that cuz once it goes into uploads then it's available publicly. It's social engineering guessing the PDF link. Ryan McHugh. Yes, he did. Ryan McHugh had a post on it uh from Altis Atlas. I can never pronounce that word. Um so I'll put that into the show notes as well. Um Ton, very good Marcus. Okay, we need to do a whole Can you come on my Tavern podcast episode 200 and we'll talk about Star Wars creatures. [laughter] >> That would be great. >> I know Ewoks and that's where >> Yeah, everybody knows Ewoks, but they beyond that. Anyway, there we go. That was the uh that was the bits and pieces that our guests have brought. Let's get into the main sort of like WordPress 6.9 stuff. So, boatloads here. Um WordPress 6.9 dropped. I expect if you're watching the show, you've probably got, you know, some kind of update mechanism. If you've got a bunch of client websites and they are not yet updated, go hit the update button. Back up before you do. Um, but yeah, go and hit the update button because we have a new version. It's been long in the making, a lot longer than normal, what with all the, you know, the the legal things happening in the WordPress space. And so 6.9 Jean, I think that's how you pronounce it. It was an American jazz P and it's Jean Harris. Uh, I wonder if we'll ever run out of jazz musicians. There'll ever be like a moment where it's ah, we've now got to be something else. I I suspect we should go to Star Wars Creatures or something like that. That would be good. Um, anyway, it's come out and there's absolutely loads for us to talk about. I've got many, many, many articles stacked up on my browser here and we'll just take them one at a time and as the bits and pieces scroll past the screen, we'll maybe get into a chat about those kind of things. So it's dropped the first thing don't know if this is of interest to any of you three but the the first item of mention is some things which have updated in in actual core of WordPress. So new features that you can play with inside your WordPress site. We've talked about this before but here we go. Um block level collaboration. So this is the idea that if you're inside a block like a paragraph or or an image or whatever it may be, you can now click a little button and you can add a a comment. Think Google Docs where you add comments. It's bound to the particular block. So you can't highlight a bit of a paragraph or anything like that, but you can comment and you know at@mention somebody who's a WordPress user on your website and they can get an email and reply and all that kind of stuff. I don't I I will never use this in my current cell because on none of the WordPress websites that I use is there another individual basically. So this won't be of any use to me. But I can can see this being important. Do any of you three have any intuitions about whether this is a useful thing? >> This can be really useful. Like if two or three people are running a web agency and they're using Google Docs collaboration feature, they can just install WordPress on a subdomain and start using it and everything remains within WordPress. They don't have to log in their Google account, you know, [snorts] freedom, right? Freedom and ownership of all the data within one space because when agency people within the agency talk, it's all like private things, right? there. You don't need to share that with the client or end result. >> Nice. Yeah, indeed. Um, you've kind of summed it up perfectly there. You know, if you if you've if you've got an internet basically, if you were to use it like that, like a Google Docs kind of thing, it would work really well. Um, it is at the minute part of a wider project which is um the the third phase of the Gutenberg project if you like and this is the idea of collaboration. We'll return to this a bit later, but anyway, that was one feature, very useful. The next one, again, a feature that just for historic reasons I don't really use inside of WordPress, uh, is the command pallet. So, you, if you're looking at the screen, you can see a screenshot. You invoke it, a little panel comes up in the middle of your screen, and it's like a universal search bar. And it used to be available in some places on your WordPress website, and now it's basically available everywhere. WP admin, front end, back end, the lot. And obviously, you know, as WordPress matures, you'll be able to do more or less everything inside of there. There's a bunch of commercial products which do this and do it like do the full monty. Uh, this is sort of building up to that. Again, opening it up to the panel. Do you think you'll actually use anything like this or see utility in it? >> I like it as long as it doesn't slow things down in the back end. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> You know, >> but I actually do like it. I I would use that if it was if it was uh quick and responsive. >> Do you use stuff like that on your I don't know your Mac or whatever it is that you've got. Do you use Spotlight and things? >> Um I I do a little bit. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yep. >> So, as much as possible, any way that I can do a shortcut and type in something and and pull it up. Um I prefer keyboard anything. So, >> do you? >> Yeah. You see, I've never really taught my I'm just trying to think if there's many things that I'm keyboard first on. >> And I think the answer is no. I I've sort of got into a habit in more or less everything that I use of clicking around the interface to get there. >> And in a modern WordPress website with the old admin UI and the new admin UI kind of overlapping, I think you're probably on to the right thing. I spend more time complaining about the fact that I have to take my hand off the keyboard in order to press the mouse than it would take to actually press the mouse button. >> Okay. >> So, yeah. >> Right. Right. Right. Right. So, you invoke this, start typing and whatever you want will come up. Start start typing the word add and add post add whatever will kind of come up and then you can >> crack on with that task. So, that seems like a really useful thing to have. Um, the next one again it's kind of like interesting. I I can't see myself using this, but I can see that it has real utility. It's called fit text to container, and it literally does what it says on the tin. You just type a word or a sentence in, and it will whatever screen you're on, it will shrink the text to maximize the the text size so that it fills that available spot. Um, I guess it's kind of good for opinionated design if you want to adjust something so that it looks that way, but uh I don't see myself using that particularly much. Again, out to you three if you want to comment. >> I think it could be a really cool design function. I'm interested to play with it and see how it looks. Yeah, >> I wonder if it ever overlaps though. Like there's this like extremely long word in Welsh, which is this name of this town, and it's just like I don't know, like 300 characters or something like that. I wonder what it would do. Wonder if it ever does text for. >> The question is, does it also shrink? >> Yeah. To fit it. >> So, in theory, it would be so tiny, all you'd see is these little dots. >> Just like a series of dots. Uh, I don't know. >> There's ants crawling on my screen. >> Yeah. I'm not sure. But, um, we'll return to some more things in a minute once we've exhausted this article. But that's the sort of features that you can use in the in the front end. Um, sorry, in the back end. And then we're on to some slightly more technical things. And again, we'll be coming backwards and forwards from this AI whole topic thing. For now, I'm just going to say them by name and kind of move on. So, the first one is the accessibility API. We'll talk about that more in a minute. That has dropped >> the abilities. >> Yeah, sorry. I apologize. I'm looking at the word accessibility at the bottom of the screen. Yeah, the abilities API. We'll come to that later when we talk more about uh a >> Let me interrupt for just a second. Yeah. to say that Tammy said that that expand um the one the previous one is a very requested uh feature for design. >> So there you go with the text one. Yeah. So >> it's not curious if you are a designer. It is only a curious if that's not something that you focus on. >> Yeah. Yeah. Quite right. Thank you. Yeah. And Tammy, thanks for mentioning that, Tammy. Um big part of the 6.9 release. It was it was curious. We'll get on to it in a minute. the uh the state of the word the more or less the only bit that I saw was Tammy's face. Um there was a bit of Mary Hob on repeat, but Tammy was also a bit that just kept repeating to me. So that was kind of interesting. Uh okay, back to the article. So yeah, uh abilities API and then we probably won't return to this, so I'll mention it in full now. Accessibility improvements. The access uh more than 30 accessibility accessibility fixes sharpen the WordPress core experience. updates improve screen reader announcements, hide unnecessary CSS generated content from assistive tech, fix cursor placement issues, and make sure typing focus stays put even when users click an autocomplete suggestion. So that's the accessibility >> always happen to see accessibility improving across especially since so many people don't focus on it for their own sites and it would be so helpful if they did. the more we can build in and bake in I think is so much better for the for the whole internet. >> I know that in the comments we've got an who is big into the accessibility side of things. So maybe if an if you want to drop a comment about the most exciting accessibility piece in there that would be interesting and then >> for people who are wondering. >> Yes, sorry apologies. Thank you. Um and then I'll just read this out as well. Performance enhancements. Who doesn't love this? Although in most cases I think it just goes completely unnoticed because we don't you know we don't actually have much going on. It just kind of you WordPress just gets faster but there's a lot of work going on in the background. 6.9 boasts an improved largest contentful paint through ondemand block styles for classic themes. minifying block theme styles and increasing the limit for inline styles uh which is removing blockages to page rendering and clearing the rendering path by dep prioritizing non-critical scripts. Also optimized database queries, refined caching, improving spawning of WPRON and a new template enhancement out output buffer that opens the door for more future optimizations. Almost none of that did I understand, but I've read it out loud and so so there you go. [laughter] >> I don't understand it, but I read it out loud for you. >> Yeah, that's right. So, [laughter] you heard it here first. I can only be thankful. Do you know what though? It's the same on the accessibility side, right? I read these things and they're beautiful and I I get I get some of them because they're a little bit more understandable, but I'm just so appreciative that some co-author of people make it their raise on detra to just do that stuff when it gets sort of taken care of on the steady cadence. Um, do I feel guilt when I hear, you know, look in Slack and I see all the accessibility bug scrubs going on and things like that? Yeah, a bit because, you know, you can't put yourself everywhere all at once. But I'm really >> And you can just summarize this as this means faster WordPress. >> Yeah. Lovely. That's right. Yeah. Great. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, we'll go without that. I should have I should have just said that, shouldn't I have? That would have been loads better. >> TR faster. >> Faster. Yeah. And this bit I always miss and somebody always picks me up on it in the comments. We need to mention the release squad, don't we? That's important. Um, so the release squad, there they are on the screen. So we had Matt. So these are the people if you like who get the named credit at the top and then we'll see the great big list of contributors in a moment. So release lead was Matt Matt Mulleng. Coordination was Akshshire Rain and Amy Camala. Tech leads were David Balvald. Uh Ella Van Derp. I don't know how to pronounce all these names. I'm sorry. Ectctor Prito. Uh design lead was Francisco Vera. Triage leads Aki Hammono and Ryan Welchure. And then the test leads were Jonathan Bosinger and Crew Pernandanda. And then I I'm not even going to try to read out this great long list, but look at it. Um loads and loads and loads and loads of contributors. Over 900 >> people uh made this project possible, delivering 340 enhancement and fixes. And uh let's just scroll through it and get some idea of what makes a WordPress near you tick. So every time you click update, these human beings did stuff. Every one of them a human just like you doing stuff to make the project better. How cool is that? Um there we go. >> Amazing. >> Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that that isn't that the bit that's the glue? That's the fact more or less that's the whole thing, right? That list of names right there kind of sums up why we do it. Uh why we're into it and all of that. It's just this brilliant community going on in the background. So, thank you to all of you. Each one of you gets a mention, but not out loud, I'm afraid. So, there we go. That was the first piece. Anything about that last little bit, my going on about the community there. >> I'm just so grateful for all the people that contribute. >> Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. What have we got? I'm just looking through the comments. Uh we've got a few fair few comments about Star Wars. I feel like I've opened up a can of worms there. Uh, I'm going to pass by. >> It's mostly Marcus. So, >> okay. Good, good, [laughter] good. He uh, if it was Okay, I'll do one just because it's funny. Uh, WordPress 7.0. Banana. I'm I'm down for it, Marcus. If you can make that happen, I'll vote for that. Yeah, Star Wars creatures. That's good. 7. Okay, one more. 7.1. Mine. [laughter] Okay. Uh, D. Any other comments that have come through that are worth mentioning? >> As long as it's not 7.2 Jar Jar, I'm good with it. >> Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughter] I'm with you. Okay, here's an then we just mentioned an an uh the accessibility um enhancements. There are many fixes that I'm happy about both in the editor and the front end. Fixes in the navigation block and an accessibility ready accordion. Woohoo. Great. Thank you. Um I I would ask if you were having an interview with me at this point, I'd ask what those fixes were, but hopefully um somebody can maybe you can link to an article or something. There we go. Right, moving on. We we alluded to this earlier. State of the word happened. Um, technically, if you were not in the room, what word shall we use to describe the live streaming? >> If you were not in the room, you were definitely in the dark. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> it wasn't dark. It was in the loop. >> It was. [laughter] It really was. I had Mary H. >> I was running I was running an online viewing party of state of the word with about 20 people in a Zoom room and of course assuming it was my internet that was glitching and then other people were saying no I'm having the same problem and I would keep refreshing and finally we said all right goes guys you'll have to watch this on your own it's it's it's not going to happen >> so just like WordPress got blamed in UK here Michelle is the blamed person you know [laughter] I sus I honestly I've been suspecting as much I thought it was Michelle It had Michelle's stamp all over it. Um the >> I can't program, but I can hack. I don't I don't understand that. >> She got She got her award and now she's showing her colors. >> Yeah, that's right. Um [laughter] you can't program, but you could break things. How about that? We'll go with that. >> Apparently. Apparently. >> Yeah. So if you if you joined State of the Word, the idea was that there was and honestly I I think for this particular one there had been quite a lot of um PR around State of the Word like I'd never seen before like there was this whole like 4 days to go they were putting things out on Twitter and things and 3 days to go and then it came to the time and I you know clicked on the appropriate link and it was broadcast to several platforms. So you could watch it on X or you could watch it on YouTube and no doubt other places as well. But it quickly became obvious that the tech um was entirely broken. You could see that it it was there. There were cameras in the room, but I got this like 15second or something cycle of Mary Hubard just repeating the same words. Um and then I got a bit of Tammy sitting in the audience right at the front and then it was back to Mary Hubard again. And um and so my first thought was, "Oh, this is bad. You know, this is bad optics. It doesn't look good for WordPress." um and what have you. And it's and then I thought this is really bad for those people who've actually booked a space and have kind of got together in like a cafe or something like that, you know, and are just sort of hanging out. And then then like the more sanguin part of me got hold and gave I gave myself a bit of a talking to and I thought it doesn't matter. You [laughter] know what's fine? Who cares? Um and so I I hope that's what everybody else got out of it as well. you know, the tech tech fails all the time, right? And there's not much you can do about it. And even in the after reporting, I've noticed that there there's no sort of like, you know, nobody's kind of prostrating themselves and apologizing and, you know, nashing of clothes and rending of teeth or any of that. They're just sort of it it didn't work, you know, let's move on and talk about the the more important things, which was the content of it. And and I think that's kind of where I've landed as well, although it was a bit of a frustration at the time. So what? You know, we move on. But Michelle, I hope for your sake it wasn't too awkward having put all those people in a Zoom room or anything like that. >> I mean, I didn't spend any money to do it, so I mean it wasn't terrible. >> Yeah, I guess it was slightly embarrassing, but once I realized it wasn't me, what could you do? We just had a little networking time and went about our our day. >> Yeah, indeed. Um, okay. So, it happened. State the word happened. And one of the curious things, I didn't see it obviously, but it looks like from this, let me see if I can find the picture. Yeah, it look I'm showing you a picture of um four, what is it? Four, eight people standing around something like obviously leaning in. I'm guessing it's a big red button or something like that. And um it would appear I don't know how real this was like there was a button and all the people on stage at that moment leaned in and pushed the button. And the idea being that WordPress 6.9 um released at that point. What I'm guessing actually happened is that somebody at the back of the room was logged into some part of WordPress.org and and clicked a button rather than that. I mean, if that button did do the thing, great. But I somehow doubt it. But but it's great. What a what a lot of fun that was. And the idea, first time ever, the release came out at the same time as this sort of live uh event. And um >> Tammy said it was a button, but it was not red. >> Oh, okay. Tammy, honestly, do you think do you think the button actually did it? In other words, if somebody had run onto the stage like 10 minutes before I just struck the button, do you think WordPress 6.9 would have come out like 10 minutes early and would the office of the OBS or whatever it is in the UK resign uh as a result? So, >> I think that somebody would have pushed the button because buttons are made to be pressed and if anybody saw it, they would have pushed it. >> I mean, look, we're a community of nerds. We push buttons. That's what we do. >> Yeah. Do you remember back in the day that was a real way to get people to do stuff online, wouldn't it? You'd make a big red button and say, "Do not push this button." [laughter] Everybody Everybody would irresistibly click the button. Uh Tammy says, "Do not break the illusion." Okay. Sorry, Tammy. [laughter] For anybody here who still thinks that Santa I mean um [laughter] [gasps] >> Hey, my kids are watching. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to stop I'm going to stop there. Okay. So, anyway, that happened, but there was a lot more in it that wasn't mentioned previously. So, we're back to sort of WordPress content again here. And I thought this was kind of interesting. So during the keynote that a few people came onto the stage and um Mullen Mullenweg spent a fair bit of time talking about WordPress as a project during the last year which has obviously I imagine for him been a very curious year. I imagine it's been a year of ups and downs for him on so many levels but he talked about um what's coming in WordPress in the near future concentrating on a lot of the AI stuff. talked about TX I think a year ago. Probably nobody had any idea that TX was coming around. Tammy got a mention um along with Nick Hamsy for their use of TX and the curious things that they've been doing. Talked about the AI team and got them on stage to talk about various different pieces. Had Mary Hubard on stage as well talking about the project as well. Um and we'll get into the AI stuff. This is this is a fascinating bit. I love this bit. This is the education side of WordPress. Easy to forget, right? I think ba basically I view WordPress as a publishing platform, but I forget the profound effect often that it has in different sectors and different parts of the world. And uh thankfully Mary Hubard hasn't. And I'll quote in 2025 there were 81 word camps in 39 countries organized by more than 5,200 volunteers attending over attended by over a 100,000 people. And here's the education bit. The learn WordPress platform served this is eye watering. Like just take this in. Like really think about it for a minute. 1.5 million users. Like what? That's just an indescribably large number of people. Um and the engagement jumped 32% after Word Camp US. I think it was touted a little bit at that point. Uh there was a real mention of word camp WordPress campus connect which um kind of got its debut in Azma in India and the idea of that program is to connect kind of real world um people with free training materials and free sessions. It's got a bit bigger. It's spread out since then um and is being used in that platform is sorry that that campus connect idea is being used in different parts of the world as well. Uh WordPress credits was also given a mention. This is the idea that if you're at a bricks and mortar university, you can um you can offset some of your scholarly program uh you can say I'm going to do WordPress stuff. And if you're at the University of Pisa, that's possible. And if you're at the university, well, it's called the Universadad Fidelas. I'm sorry if I got that wrong. In Costa Rica, you can also do the same thing. I love listening to you pronounce words from other languages. >> I know it's uh it's bad. Let's just say that. But you can um you can offset actual real word credits. So that's a whole other thing as well. And I do you know what? Those are the bits that amazing program >> keep me interested. Don't you think that's just amazing? The one and a half million. >> It's fascinating. I love it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really? And you know, it's a great way to introduce WordPress to the younger generation because we already have a lot of not so young people in the WordPress space. So getting new people is the key thing. >> I think he's looking at the >> What are you saying here? What are you saying here? [laughter] >> I I have no words. Um yeah, I Dinda I could be wrong about this, but it feels like you're like the the part of the world where you are, you're based in India. Obviously, I kind of obsess about WordPress and talk to a lot of people. It does feel like it's um it's more hot, let's go with that definition, in your neck of the woods than it is here. Like events everywhere. >> There seems to be a lot of youth in it. I'm kind of fascinated to see how Word Camp Asia goes in Mumbai. Whether that's going to be the first like four, five, six, 7,000 attendee word camp. >> Yes, it's going to be the biggest one. I guess uh at least for flagship word games because I I I because again you know a lot of people want to attend flagship word camps but there's the factor of money and you know physibility of you know taking leave from job there's lot of things but when you it's happening in your own country then you can travel locally and you know attend it and get the feel of it because a flagship word camp has an allgether different vibe compared to a local word camp of like 200 or 300 people And yes there is more. Why? Because here youngsters are actually interested in you know technology and all that and WordPress is one of the big foundation like because normally if you talk to someone hey do you want to build a website and say oh WordPress website or a Wix they already know what Wix is what Squarespace is what WordPress is. So it's not like you're going to try to explain what the difference. So obviously you got to explain the difference between WordPress hog and WordPress.com like you know go step by step but they are already familiar with these things they know what plugins is what themes are. So and plus we have lot of local word camps. So that is like the first you know step of introducing people to WordPress. So plus they see people making money right and money is a big motivator let me tell you. Yeah, it feels like um like it obviously I'm not in India so I can't really make the comparison directly but it feels like it was here like 12 years ago or something you know that kind of level of excitement over there. Now you can even compare now the plugins ecosystem like if when I started in WordPress space like like if you say first five or 10 years in WordPress space most of the plug-in companies came from UK, US or maybe Australia these countries but now if you see the dominance it's like India, Bangladesh and you know like Bangladesh has come out of nowhere right and they are making really good products right so you know it affects like if someone's living next to me is making amazing product I will also get that vibe you know, why can't I do that? >> So, really related to that, going back to Matt's um speech at State of the Word, here's some here's some interesting data around that and some of it's really curious. So, so for example, I kind of had this intuition based upon nothing that WordPress had kind of flatlined a little bit and and it would appear that that is in fact the case. 43% of the web, I think we were probably talking about the same number this time last year. There was a bit of me which was also kind of fearful that that would gone down that that might have gone down. I don't know why that would cause fear in me but obviously nobody likes to see the thing that they're doing with their life going down but steady away 43% of the web. Um but here's an interesting point that Matt made that I hadn't really given any thought to. He was saying that imagine keeping it like that in an era where companies like Shopify have a massive marketing budget. Uh you know where they can advertise on television in the UK they're advertising on the tube network on bus uh on the telly all of that kind of stuff. WordPress doesn't do anything like that. So even just staying at 43% is kind of fairly remarkable. And then um this is curious. So, we're back into Asia, not India specifically. Japan, country that I haven't really given um much time to on this show in the past. Japan, it says, remains a standout market. 59%, let's go with that. Slightly under, but 59% of all all Japanese websites are running on WordPress as their platform of choice. The CMS market share for WordPress is 83% which is pretty phenomenal. And Japan is now the second most used language uh outside of English. Also, curiously, English, which I think until this year was always the the language that was dominant in terms of like percentages, that's now flipped. Uh is now no longer the dominant one because 56% of WordPress installs are now using a non English language. So I guess Japan might be you know Japanese might be a big part of that and whatever variant of language you're using if you're in India or Bangladesh or what have you. So that I think probably signals a shift not just for Matt's thinking in terms of WordPress um generally but you know more specifically I imagine there's going to be more of an effort to get into those communities help those communities and all of that kind of stuff. um the usual things about themes and plugins and what have you. And here's another eye watering number if you didn't, you know, if you want another one. WordPress during the last year up until the date of the uh of the event had been downloaded 79.5 million times. >> Bogling, >> isn't it? Isn't it just But uh so it would appear that WordPress's de demographics are definitely changing. um you know it's it feels like it's skewing much more towards uh Asia and that part of the world which I think is obviously quite exciting if you're in that part of the world. Anybody want to add anything to those bits and pieces? I feel there was a lot to unpack there. >> I think the flexibility WordPress gives it's still going to grow. Yes, there was a chatter that the you know like you said like the growth of the WordPress has stalled or paused or plateaued but I think the flexibility part the freedom part will always make WordPress grow and plus the community this year yes prior to la this year there was little bit of negativity in the community we all know why but this year things have been positive and people are doing positive things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I I agree. I think that once we got back to just keeping our eyes forward and focusing on what was important, um it's it the the power of what WordPress offers is still unprecedented and and unmatchable. So, we just need to keep our eyes looking at what's important and and stick with that. >> Indeed. Indeed. Um there will be more bits and pieces linked to all of these different things uh in the show notes. But I think one of the areas like if you ignore the geography whether it's growing in you know India or the UK or Australia or wherever it may be I think undeniably one of the areas of growth in terms of the tech is this bit. So this is James Leage's website. By the way James what the heck? James snagged a onelet domain name. Um, he's got the domain J.Cv. [laughter] So, the entire domain is three letters. That's well done. Um, James Leage is the is the head I think head. I want to say head. I don't know if he's like the co-lead or but I think head of the AI endeavors over at Automatic. He was one of the people on stage. If you're looking at the screen, you'll be able to see there's a photo of him on stage with Matt and Mary and and Felix Ants and uh is that Jeffrey Paul, I think, as well. And um they were on stage talking about AI and you know AI and I sorry Tammy uh [laughter] we have this sort of strange kind of relationship but I am definitely in the minority. Everybody seems to be absolutely bowled over by AI and all the different things it can do. And James has produced an article where he sort of lays out what they're doing at Automatic. And one of the things which I think is curious that comes out of this article and he's and he goes he really does drill this down. He sort of makes the point and then amplifies it. He said what would usually be a year's worth of development takes place in a month now. So what the heck? How [laughter] how do you keep up with that? So he gives an example that you know they'd done the prep work for the presentation at state of the word and then the day before that presentation um Deep Seat dropped this new AI which was like equivalent to chat GPT5 and all of a sudden you've got to go back to the drawing board and kind of realign all the different bits and pieces or what have you. Anyway, the AI endeavors in WordPress can be thought of in four stages. the abilities API, the WP AI client, the MCP adapter, and the AI experiments plugin. And it would appear that WordPress rather than try to be an AI client, you know, rather than have an account with WordPress.com where you go and get your AI, the idea is that WordPress is going to build solutions at this other abstracted layer so that you can do all the things in WordPress by binding it to some other AI. And uh and in that way they they kind of feel that they're going to futureproof themselves because the AI itself the the engine that's driving the actual interactions going backwards and forwards is not going to be a WordPress thing. It's going to be something else. So fascinating, scary, and interesting at the same time. I don't know what your thoughts are on AI, but I'm going to let you have some if you wish. >> Yeah, it's good. They're working on the foundation part of it. The usable features are slowly creeping in. Like if you see SEO plugins, you know, generate title metadata text and they have actually included this feature in that AI experiments plug-in, generate the title and all that, but other third party plugins are already doing that by connecting to you know AI other AI models and all that. So AI is going to be big but not now but the good part is they are doing a kind of a head start in building the foundation part of it so that others can come in and use that foundation to build something useful. Yeah, that's right. James is a great pains to sort of say that this is like a foundational layer. I Yeah, I I don't know. I I'm I'm curious to see how this goes. I Tammy, you I know you want to hit me over the head at this point, but [laughter] we'll see. We'll see how it all goes. But, uh certainly a lot of work being done. >> Yeah. I I my concern I think is with AI in general, this is just a is is that we try to do too much too fast and when that happens then you know how you know what happens if somebody puts something out in WordPress that breaks everything because you know and you have to go back and and figure it out because there's like five million new things to WordPress as opposed to two or three new things to WordPress and and so I think that the As with everything with technology is I always have concerns about our discipline more than I actually have about the technology itself. >> Um I'm with you. Uh Tammy helpfully though said she's not going to hit me over the head with a bat because she's too jet-lagged. That's good. Uh you remain >> next week. Watch out. >> Yeah. Do you know what though? The the the bit that kind of I wonder is with with the AI stuff creeping into the editor. So, it can do your meta tags and it can do your descriptions and like Dinda said, you know, it can do your SEO stuff. Um, where where does all the human time come to read all of this stuff? I I guess that's the bit that I that sort of concerns me a little bit is that in in an effort to produce more and more content. I just don't know who the audience uh is for more and more of this content. >> And you know, it's not just about content. Uh the other day I was reading a you know following a conversation where someone said like we don't need to buy plugins anymore. We I can just use AI to spin up a plugin and I'm done with it. And I thought like we don't buy a plug-in for the code. We buy it for support and updates. How is your AI generated plug-in going to update for a security issue? Right. >> So this is like you know it's not a >> Yeah. Go ahead Mark. >> Yeah. Oh I was just going to say that's what I've heard. I've heard people say, "Yeah, it's great to spin up a plugin, but what happens next week when you have to update it or anything like that?" If you don't if you know how to vibe code, but you don't know how to do anything beyond that, you still need to have somebody that's able to to go in and and either fix things or or change things or upgrade things. And I think that that's where AI right now falls short. I think it will eventually get there where where there may be no human interaction, [laughter] >> but who knows? I just sort of feel like I'm a bit discombobulated by it all because it's all coming so thick and so fast and the the horizon is so broad and and it it was a long way away and now it's suddenly rushing towards us and there's so many different things that it can do and I don't really know that that we've kind of figured out where we sit inside of that relationship to it yet and maybe you know give it another year another two years we'll have figured out okay it's useful for that but it's not useful for that and it you know we thought it'd be fun to do that kind of thing and it turns out nobody wants to read that kind of thing. So, okay. But Tammy makes the point that, you know, the way that WordPress is approaching it is that they're doing tools inside of core uh so that you can Yeah. Well, I'll read what she says rather than try and interpret it. Uh Tammy says, which is why we're doing tools approach in core. There is the discipline. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Tommy. I appreciate it. Conversation is not going to end. I'm sure we'll figure it out. But we do have uh it is a big part of WordPress's future in the year 2026. Uh there is a lot coming. I would highly recommend that you read um James Lee's article. I'll put it into the show notes so that you can have a little look. There's a few more bits and pieces. I'll just mention these briefly. These are a few things which have dropped in WordPress 6.9 that you may not have noticed but there's a few articles which help us to do that. So this is aki. This is nice. It's like a tiny little thing, but it's a big thing at the same time. You can now hide and show blocks on the uh the front end. Um there's a little video here. I won't play it, but essentially there's a menu item. Now, if you rightclick on a block uh or use the little, you know, the little panel above the block when you interact with it, you can hide a block and it will just disappear off the front end. Obviously, it's still visible in the in the inserter or or the panel on the left hand side. So, you can still see that it's there. But, you know, I don't know, you may want to just take a paragraph away or something like that briefly or an image or something like that. You can now do that. That's built in to WordPress 6.9. Um, there's a couple of other things as well. What did we mention? Yeah, there's the hide show blocks. We just talked about that. This is lovely. Like, this I love. Um, this is visual drag and drop. I'm such a such a page builder lover. I think it goes to my core. Um, so this is the ability to pick stuff up on the canvas of the Gutenberg editor. If you like, instead of using little arrows to move things around, like a paragraph up and a paragraph down, you now just grab the paragraph with the mouse. Just sort of move it where you want it to go and uh, let go. And there it now lives. I can't believe that wasn't a thing. Actually, I've never missed it. And now it's there. I'll be I think I'll be using it all the time. I [snorts] wonder how many times I'll get things wrong and publish an article where the paragraphs are all in the wrong place because I've accidentally picked something up and dropped it. I do that with blocks quite a lot. Uh what else have we got? UI workflows. The accordion block we mentioned before. You've got the ability uh term query and companion blocks. Time to read block. Everybody's favorite, the maths block that's going to be used by everyone all the time. [snorts] >> Love your sarcasm. [laughter] >> Yeah. Does I mean I I guess I mean >> when will we ever use math in real life? >> Does it satisfy the 80/20 rule in WordPress though? That's what I want to know. >> You know the funny thing is like out of all the features listed here, I'm I will be using and the most excited thing for me is the hide and display block. I know some people call it like it's a dumb feature, but you know what? [laughter] Lot of people going to use this feature. >> Yeah, I saw that and I and I fell in love with it immediately. Same thing. Just like >> Well, it's like that kind of like in the past if you really wanted to make major amendments to an article. You had to publish it in you have to unpublish it or put it back into draft or something like that. Whereas now, >> we get it and you know, >> yeah, you could just rewrite entire sections of it. just hide hide hide hide hide and then just you know come back to it. It's still published. You're not going to use lose the SEO juice. I think actually Dinda it's going to become really powerful and I I get what you mean. When we look at these things it's easy to sort of make fence and say oh the maths block somebody's going to love that. >> Normal users you know they they want to use simple features they don't know what abilities API is right. >> Yeah yeah yeah exactly. Anyway, there it is. >> The hide block though for people who have ADHD like me'll be like, I swear I put it in there. Why isn't it showing that? >> Yet, we [laughter] are so in the >> Why? Why does this site Why is the site using up so many resources? I don't see anything. It's all those giant photos you've hidden. [laughter] >> Let me see if I can see it. I don't think it shows on this particular UI, but I think you get like, you know, that icon. There it is. you know the um the icon that's taken over it's like the little eye icon. >> You either get a little closed eye or an open eye icon. So in that way you can tell >> see it if you pop up at that you are right about that. Yes. [laughter] >> All right Michelle you need to put a post-it note check for the hidden block and just stick it on your computer all over my monitor. >> That's the way. >> Actually I don't know what the UX is going to be for that. So I'm hovering my mouse over the insertter. it. I don't know if the little eye icon if the paragraph will I'm presuming it will stay in this panel here but have the icon next to it. But it might be quite nice a bit like when you edit I don't know a template part or something like that. It's in a different color. Might be quite nice to have a a different colored you know the paragraph instead of it being in black text it suddenly goes to red or >> something. It's kind of Photoshop like Photoshop does the same thing. You can just click the um but it doesn't change the color. I like that idea for sure. >> You see, that's that is my good idea for 2025. >> That's your good idea right there. You got it. >> Finally. I've only got or so left. [laughter] That's my good idea. Um >> I do joke I joke about it, but I think it's a great feature. >> Yeah, indeed. Then we got a few curious things like the time to read block. You know, you can imagine that would be kind of useful if you're um doing blog articles. um you've got the capacity now if you drop in a one of these blocks which is the comment count and comment links block. I know that you know I imagine it's quite hard these days what with Facebook and Twitter and everything to get comments but I know that some properties still get lots of that. You can show the number of comments you know like we've got 15 comments over here or something like that. Uh and then there's a whole bunch of other stuff um gallery aspect ratios yada yada yada lots and lots and lots of stuff. So, okay. I think >> I think we should bring back a a site counter um like we had back in the '9s. So, like a for retro blogs, it could be like how many times >> day or the day? >> I would like to get rid I'd like to get rid of the time to read anything because I either feel inadequate or like I'm competing with somebody. [laughter] what you should get write a Chrome extension which identifies if there's a time to read uh thing on any website and then it multiplies it by 15 or something like that. >> There you go. [laughter] >> Time to read 8,000 minutes. It only took me a week. >> I can do that. Yeah, [laughter] I can do that. Okay, so that's good. Um, right. Okay, I think that's WordPress 8.9 done. Right, very quickly then. We don't have much time left. I saw this piece. I think this came in Deinda's newsletter. I think I cribbed this from his newsletter this morning. Um, it's over on LinkedIn. Um, and it was AD Spak. AD is a a developer who has a plug-in called Translate Press, which is a bit like a kind of page builder for doing your translations. He's been looking carefully at Black Friday deal promotions in the WordPress space, and he's drawn a couple of conclusions from them. Uh, I don't know how obsessed you got about this, but obviously if you're a developer like he is and your livelihood is wrapped around Black Friday and things like that, then it's important to know what everybody else is doing. Drawn a couple of conclusions. The first one is he's noticed a strong push to increase the average order value and lifetime value. And he's saying that more companies are structuring their black black Friday deals to nudge customers into higher tiers. I think if we cast our mind back just a few years ago, the Black Friday thing was all about getting new users to sign up um not to push existing users onto the next higher tier. So that's the curious observation. The second observation that he noticed was um this thing which I've I I confess I've seen this a lot this year, higher renewal prices. So the idea that you deeply discount this one-year package and then you offer it at, you know, some sort of usual rate next year. So you might offer, I don't know, 70 80% in some cases I saw this year and then you just return them to the normal pricing. So you know the hope is that they I just either make use of it or dare I say it forget to cancel or something like that. any does it I mean I'm guessing Da Vinder if you included it in your newsletter you must have thought this was interesting. >> Yeah because uh these trends are on point. The other thing that probably he missed is like companies that have multiple products they are actually promoting their bundles so that people buy whole bouquet of their plugins. They get more revenue from one transaction because if you buy 10 plugins in a bundle you're not going to use all those 10 plugins. So you're not expecting 10x support requests, right? Yeah. >> So that's there and this renewal thing like higher renewal and you know 50% discount on first this has been there for few years now and I think automotive products have championed this and now everyone is following it and it does make sense because it basically gives the user to a chance to try the product at a very discounted you know price and obviously if it's working the person will renew it at a so-called higher rate. >> Yeah. Um I I saw um Katie Keith put a post out on X where she was sort you see that one where she was saying she's very candid Katie isn't she >> I saw that one too. >> She was saying that she does this whole Awesome Motive dance where like right before Black Friday she goes through and cancels all the Awesome Motive products and then signs up again for Black Friday. Um because she knows she's going to get this one I I don't know how [laughter] that works. you know whether she has to supply a new email address or something and there was you know broad appreciation I think for that but also some people are why don't you just pay them you know what it is but it was kind of interesting that people do that dance in the expectation that you know that's what's happening every black Friday I can pick up everything cheap >> yeah once they figure out how to attach a license to a specific domain this dance is going to stop >> yeah yeah yeah okay okay you've just provided the Um and the final thing which AD figured out which is very much you know is in his own wheelhouse is that there were no um almost nobody in the translation press space was doing a Black Friday deal. So I'm guessing he's thinking about things like we got and companies like that. Apparently they on mass had all opted out of uh doing Black Friday deals. I don't know how long the Black Friday thing last will last but it seems super popular everywhere. Did you do one at MainWP? >> We We did. We are on We're on your page. Uh we and and it's 25% off and and it the renewal the way that we do it is that's lifetime. So every single year at renewal you buy the annual and you get uh $50 off. >> Okay. >> And next year you would get $50 off and the year after that you'd get $50 off. And um and the way that the way that we look at it is a we don't need people doing the dance, >> b uh the longer people use our product, the less they're going to need support. And so um so it it ends up being a longer lifetime value to us actually. We've discovered by just renewing at the Black Friday price. Uh the thing that I noticed which I found interesting uh this year is I remember when Black Friday was Friday through Monday. >> Oh. >> And now now it starts in on November 1st. I'm surprised it doesn't start on July 5th or >> Oh no. January the 1st will be the next. And it, you know, I I what I found interesting was um when we we have a roundup similar to yours, Nathan, and I think we got over 225 offers or something. And um what I found interesting was that this year people were willing to announce what their Black Friday special was ahead of time, far ahead of when it actually went active. Whereas last year, anyone if they said that their that their special started on say November 24th, um they wouldn't want it actually listed until November 24th. >> Yeah. >> This year they were willing to list it like way ahead of time so people would know what was coming. And I found that that to be kind of an interesting trend. Well, don't you think that's curious that like so when you submit it to my page, I make it really clear on the intake form that the minute I publish it or rather the minute that you send it to me, I'm going to put it on the website. So in some cases, I'm getting those in late September. So their their their decrease pricing is fully available for two months. >> That is to say, people know that it's going to be decreased in two months. And I I find the psychology of that so curious like what it'd be a bit like going into a clothes store and saying we've got a sale in six weeks. Uh but we still got things at full price now if you want them. And I I guess it's I guess it just comes down to sort of like well desperation is not really the right word but something akin to that that they know that there's just going to be this melee for a period of time. Everybody's only got a certain amount of money in their wallet. So, they're trying to position themselves so that we've got 80% off over here and you know about it long in advance, right? You're going to ear $50 for our thing, not their thing. But boy, it gets messy. I mean, I don't >> Yeah, but on the other hand, I mean, I just had a project in fact that I that I just started uh two months ago. I knew that a couple of the plugins that I was going to need were going to have Black Fridays, but I needed the plugin then because I needed to get on the project and and and of course these are all smaller people anyway and and I want to support them so it doesn't bother me that much. >> Good. Good. Well, I'm I'm pleased to hear about it. So, um Mark, >> I even ran I'm sorry. I even ran a Black Friday special on my small little marketing boutique and I had two people make purchases who knew a special and opted not to use the discount code so that I would get the full value of their product. >> That's really awesome. Awesome. >> There's an interesting idea. The idea of opting out of the Black Friday just cuz you want to do the full monty. Yeah, that's curious. >> And I did get two submissions which had in capital letters, do not publish this till the day [clears throat] it starts. And I was really >> it's actually it's actually a question on our form. And so when I go through and approve the approve the listing, uh if they say that they don't want to listen until such and such a date, then I just set the publish date as that. And it's still it's still automated to I mean I have to approve everything anyway. So >> Yep. Um so uh who is this? Mark. Mark. Mark in the UK. Hello. Mark Wilkinson. He says he really doesn't get Black Friday deals. Mark's got a few plugins out there. Um, so I'm guessing Mark that you don't participate in that there wouldn't be a dance. He said if you value your product and always sell it at that price. Yeah, that's the other curious thing, isn't it? I suppose is that whole kind of weird thing from the end use. But we're so used to it everywhere, aren't we? It's just everybody um uh gets on board and is dealing cheaper deals. Mark says, sorry, this is Marcus Bennett. Uh, I'd share my deal a month ahead on your list, but I wouldn't advertise that on my own site until the deal starts. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So, you advertise it on these third party places, these sort of aggregated places, but not on your your own website. >> Actually, along those lines, I noticed uh I think Gravity Forms was one of the ones that said our Black Friday special starts, and they had a countdown timer on when their Black Friday like 3 days or 5 days or whatever ahead. So, that was interesting, too. So, they actually did advertise on their site that it was coming. >> I wonder how many people shelled out for stuff that they didn't need this Black Friday. I kind of make it a bit of a point on Black Friday to try to stay away from all that chaos because I uh I find it very easy to spend money that I shouldn't. [laughter] >> I bought this little plugin called Podcaster Plus. >> Oh, what the heck? >> I got this lifetime deal, so I think it was worth it. >> Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully, Michelle, it's uh yeah, we can mention that another time. Um it's not about that here right now. Um what does Patricia say? Patricia says, uh so she's responding to Mark, who you know is obviously not in favor of those deals. I like deals as a buyer, but I don't understand from a seller point of view, like not valuing your customers from other months. Interesting. Anyway, there was the piece by AD. It's on LinkedIn. Again, links in the show notes. Right, very quickly because time is running short. I'm going to miss that. I'm also going to miss that. I mentioned it already. Just a couple of things which came into my world this week. In many cases, just new plugins that I thought you might like to check out. I've not heard of them before. If you have, apologies. They may not be brand new. So, this is the first one. It's called Opinion Camp, and it's going to be a a free poll plugin, or at least they've got a free option. So, if you want to do polls on your WordPress website, this is an option. Honestly, I'm going to give each one that amount of time. We could have delved into them, but I've run out of time. So, here we go. The next one is um ebook crafter, which enables you to turn a WordPress post into like an ebook basically. You click a button and it becomes >> an ebook. Start a free trial. So, I'm guessing they got a pro version as well. Don't know whether it's >> I purchased this. >> Yeah. You like it >> prior to Yeah. Still working on some of the, you know, the glitches in it. I don't want to say glitches, but yeah, >> he's making it better. He's absolutely making it better as it goes with a lot of feedback. So I I was an early purchaser. He gave it to me for free. I went back and purchased it to support um to support him. But also it's a great idea and because I have taken a blog and turned it into a book, I wanted to be able to um to experiment with it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At the moment is touting PDFs, but I don't know if that's going to be more formats in the future, like you know, Kindle compatible things, stuff like that. Okay, the next one. Loving this one. This is so great. Uh this is called neurogenesis styler and uh what it's doing is injecting into core blocks more style CSS options nothing more that's it. So you know how there's loads of things that you wish to do that you have to open up a I don't know a text editor or an IDE or you know have a plugin which will enable you to have CSS somewhere on your site. This will do that for call block. So, it adds options for typography, background, border radius, spacing, visual effects, block sizing, and more. And there's a lovely picture down here, which kind of sums up the entire plug-in, you know, just kind of what you'd expect. Really, I I love this sort of stuff. Makes makes WordPress core seem so cool when third party people come along and do stuff like that. Uh, this one I got kind of got caught out here. I just assumed that the fluent people, you know, uh WP manage ninja were behind this and I don't think Dinda, that's not true, right? This is not a fluent product. >> No, this is a third party product. I think it's by Spencer forman. >> Oh, that's it. Yeah, Spencer for Thank you. Um and it's if you've got the Fluent suite, so you know, um they're taking over the world, aren't they? It's like they're doing everything so well. Uh if you've got their one of their suites like Fluent Forms, Fluent CRM, Fluent Cart and all the other ones, you might want to connect it to some kind of AI and Fluent uh MCP is a third party solution which will help you to do that. Links in the show notes. These are plugins which used to cost money but have now been made free. Uh WP road map, so you know like canban boards for road maps for products, that kind of thing. You get the idea. I'm sure you've seen things like that before. And by the same developer, uh, YouTube for WordPress, which enables you to put on your website, you know, YouTube videos and playlists and all the kind of stuff that you might see on the actual word, uh, YouTube website. You can do that inside of WordPress. They used to be paid and now they're free. I don't know if the developer has found other things to do or if it's going to be maintained, but anyway, there we go. Uh, penultimate one is this one. It's over on GitHub. It's a virtual media folder plugin. And this I'm just going to read it out from the about section here. Virtual media folders brings virtual folder organization to your WordPress media library. Organize your media files into hierarchical folders without actually moving anything on the disk. Your folders are virtual. Uh so the URLs of your bits and pieces never change. I'm sure that there are third party plugins that you can pay for that do this already. I know that there are, but this one Yeah. Anyway, there it is. It's on GitHub, so you can check it out. And no, this is the penultimate one. Um, if you attended last year, I know an did. Um, the the CloudFest hackathon is coming back in the year 2026. It's going to be on March the 20th through the 22nd. You have to apply uh to be in the room and so hit this button here, links in the show notes, but the URL is hackathon.cloudfest.com. Uh, I've got an episode on the WP Bills podcast coming out with an in the near future where we talk a little bit about last year's event. So maybe go and check that website out. And the last one I'm not going to reveal until the very last moment. I'm just going to ask Michelle what she'd been up to with Mark Westgard. >> So So Mark and I have decided this year because you know he's one of my WordPress besties that we exchange gifts for Christmas every year. And this year we get because of just, you know, budget and things like that, we set a $25 limit and decided it had to make the other person laugh. Now, my gift to him has not arrived yet, so I can't tell you all publicly what it is because he hasn't seen it yet, but his gift to me arrived on Saturday, and I did post it on Twitter and all of the socials. Uh, so you're welcome to share that now on screen. [laughter] >> I love stuff like this. I have no idea. Like what what even is [laughter] that? It's like a giant soft one of those dancing like you see them often at like car dealerships. The note said not only was it for Christmas, but it was for the grand opening of my online business. [laughter] Can you can you imagine the day that cuz I'm guessing right I'm guessing that this product was probably a kid >> in a room somewhere with a vacuum cleaner who turned it on to blow instead of sock somehow connected it to some sort of fabric and this happened and they immediately wet themselves laughing put some eyes on it were like oh >> oh we've got a product I love stuff like this >> I don't believe that Twitter and I didn't check but I don't believe that Twitter lets you put alt text for video yet. So, I did include an alt description which just says the video is an inflatable tube man powered by a fan. It's rat about 6 feet tall and it's dancing in my living room for anybody who >> you know what's great about that. What's great about that is it will always make you laugh. It's not just going to make you laugh once. It's going to make you laugh every time you see it. >> It's in my living room. So now when I know people are coming over and I want to really welcome them, I turn it on before they arrive and they walk in and I'm like, "Just for you." >> Yes. For you, [laughter] Michelle. Next time you're on this show, it's got to be where those guitars are. I want it in the background. I want it the whole time. >> It's so loud. >> Oh, is it? >> It has such [laughter] a fan like the fan noise in it. I mean, I could mute myself and let you see it briefly, but but it is very loud. [laughter] >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Right. There we go. Um, >> anyway, I wanted to share that. >> No, that's good. Love it. Right, a couple of comments just before we go. Courtney says, "I've long loved Pressbooks." I guess that's the plugin that we were looking at for self. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is something else for self-hosting ebook and eop creation uses multi-sightes. That's a different solution. >> Thank you very much. And an who I just mentioned said that the Cloud Fest hackathon is so worthwhile applying for. An has won it two years in a row. So, you know, you've got to upend her. She's on for the trifecta this year. So, can't can't stop An in her tracks. There we go. That's it. That is all we've got time for. Appreciate Firstly, I'm going to big shout out to Michelle and to Deinda who stepped in at the 11th hour. Um, however, Mark does is not immune to thanks because he was up at like stupid o' [laughter] >> It wasn't the 11th hour. It was the 5:00 a.m. hour. >> Yes, the five. Yeah, that's right. And uh and I really appreciate that as well. So, thank you to you three. Really appreciate it. But also, thanks to anybody that dropped by and left a comment. That's lovely, too. It keeps the show going and driving it forward. There's only one last humiliating thing for the three of us, four of us to do. There's there's my inability to count again. Is to give us the hands. Give us the slight handy wavy thing. And there we go. And I will publish that. And we will see you next week for another episode of This Week in WordPress featuring who knows who. >> Bye everybody. >> Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye., This Week in WordPress #358, YouTube, 01kc1za8c0y8mxey8mrcp17btt.