This Week in WordPress #375  🔗 **Source:** [This Week in WordPress #375](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbF3rXOKUFE) Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, hello wherever you are on planet Earth. I imagine nobody else is is watching this outside of that introduction. >> A friend of mine was I'm going to go on a total segue. I I told this story and it so it's fresh in my mind. a friend of mine when I was about 20 years old got a a record deal. Um, and there was a really big deal and it turned out it didn't actually go anywhere, but in the contract that he signed, their music could be distributed and this was literally in black and white in the Earth and its solar system. Isn't that weird that the record label would like think, okay, this is going to be a hit on Mars or Jupiter or whatever. Anyway, >> they're just hedging that they're hedging their bets just in case. >> Right. That's right. Because imagine if the next Beatles came along where there's like I don't know years of playing it. He wasn't the next Beatles, it turns out. Anyway, there we go. Uh, thank you for joining us. It's number 375 of this week in WordPress. We're going to talk a lot about WordPress, the community, and all the other bits and pieces that we usually do. We'll be here for about 90 minutes. If you fancy getting your friends, colleagues, relations, and all of that involved, we'd love that. The the simple URL to send people to would be this one, which is being being modeled by the wonderful Steve Burge. Uh, at the moment, it's wpbuilds.comlive. Once more, wpbuilds.comlive. Go and stick that into the socials of your choice. And if you go over there, then uh you got a couple of choices in terms of comments. If you're on desktop, over on the right is YouTube comments. So if you're logged into Google, you can make comments over there. Uh one or two people have already done that. However, if you don't have a Google account or a YouTube account, there's an option buried inside the player itself. Top right, it says live chat. I believe you can use that. You don't need to be logged into anything whatsoever. So let's go around the uh the panel and get some introductions. Um we're joined, let's go in the corner, bottom corner there. We're joined by Michelle Fchett. How you doing? I am good. I just had a week of vacation. >> Oh, did you? Oh, lovely. I've just seen your little >> Gone. Sorry. Carry on. >> I could I couldn't go to Word Camp Europe, so instead my boyfriend and I took a a vacation down the New England coast. >> Oh, the US. >> Oh, lovely. That sounds really nice of Boston, Connecticut, and New York City. It was awesome. >> Lovely stuff. I've just noticed your moniker, you know, where where mine says other way. where mine says WP builds like that and Steve says Polish press. Yours says WP Jill of all trades. I like that. >> I have so many things going on. I couldn't pick one. >> Yeah, that's a good it's a good idea. Uh I'll read your uh your bio into the record. >> Yeah. And we'll get some idea of that. So Michelle Pricette, there she is, is the executive director of Post Status. And in addition to the work over there, Michelle is the podcast producer at WP Coffee Talk, co-founder of Underrepresented in Tech and WP Speakers. Also involved in WP Career Pages, co-founder of Sponsor Me WP Speed Network Online. She likes to write and so therefore is an author, influencer, and a frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress and tech events living outside of Rochester, New York. She is an avid nature photographer and if you want to check out the whole thing in one URL, meet Michelle online is the way to do it. That is to say, meet Michelle dot online is the way. >> Got to put the dot in the right place. >> Got to put the dot in the right place. Yeah, indeed. It's kind of curious. That's still a There must be a better way than having dots in URL. Is there no way that we could get rid of the dots at some point? Would it be possible? >> I think we could have. Yeah. until they added all of the different various extensions. Now you have to have it because people won't know. >> Yeah, that's a good point. We could Yeah. Okay. All right. It's not a bad idea. >> Otherwise fish. >> I don't I don't know the the the dots up there with the Oxford comma. You'll kind of pry it from my cold dead hand. >> Okay. >> So, I've heard the I heard the online extension twice in one day now after never having heard of it before. >> Oh. because >> didn't didn't um >> Yoast >> Yoast joined your >> Yeah. >> which made my grammatical head hurt a little bit. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Yoast, Ma, and I believe Taco and a bunch of other people have got into that. I'm going to going to feature that a little bit later. I haven't got enough intel on that just yet, so it hasn't really featured in this week's show, but at some point in the near future, I'll do a podcast recording hopefully with one of them and get the skinny on that. Okay. So, there's Michelle, but also we're joined by Mark. Mark is um Mark. Oh, it's like 4:00 a.m. or something over there at the minute. And so, >> I love how you exaggerate how early it is here. What time is it? If it if it if it uh you know gets any sympathy, then yeah, it's 4 in the morning. No, it's it's >> six. >> It's still six. I mean, I was found asleep at 6. >> It's still pretty early. I don't like seeing six o'clock ever. Here we go though. Mark Benzakine or Benzakane I should say. Sorry about that. Mark is the partnerships and community lead at MainWP where he works with plug-in developers, agencies, hosts, and service providers to help expand what's possible within the WordPress open source ecosystem. A longtime WordPress professional, Mark is passionate about collaboration, community building, and finding practical ways for businesses to help benefit from open-source technology while maintaining ownership and control of their websites. Okie dokie. Thanks for joining us, Mark. And finally, >> thanks for having me. >> Down there, Steve Burge. I've already said his name out loud. How you doing, Steve? You all right? >> Yeah, doing good. Thanks. >> Good, good, good. So, Steve is the founder of Publish Press. If you go and Google that, you'll be able to see all of the wonderful things they do. Um, and Publish Press, help make plugins to improve your WordPress publishing. He's from England. I don't need to say anymore. It's as good as it gets. He lives in Florida. Has an extra friend with him on the podcast today. Oh, you do? Who's your ex? >> So, it's the summer vacation here. Like, I know for people in England, this is a little weird, but school basically is out already. Yeah. >> And so lots of my kids friends have gone off on vacation. They're in >> Okay. >> We're in Florida. They've gone to People basically go to the mountains from Florida. >> They go to North Carolina, Colorado, anywhere where it's cooler. So my kids have basically accumulated a ton of animals, other people's pets. >> We're we're basically animal sitting a ton. So one of them has taken a particular liking to my office. Oh, this is an iguana or something. I really want to see what this is. WHAT YOU GOT? OH. OH, that's Stop the Hold the phone. >> We just end it there. This is the highlight already. >> And he's been hanging out with me for like a whole week now in the office. >> Yeah. >> Well, the fact that you The fact that you brought this glorious, fairly large rabbit Yes. um onto the show. It tells me that not only has the rabbit taken a liking to you, Steve, but I think that's it. Reciprocal, isn't it? You seem to quite like the rabbit. >> I never really liked rabbits before, but this one has been great. Um it just >> it's a potty trained rabbit, so I can let it go around the office. >> Well, Michelle has a cat, which I'm expecting to wander in at some point. If you leave the rabbit on your keyboard, we could see what fun that would have during the course of Joe, how how long did you get through it before your screen went dark? There is our panel though. Uh we're joined by three people and a rabbit and maybe a cat in just a moment. We'll see how that goes. >> I think she's sleeping behind the screen right now. So, >> oh dear. Oh dear. Cancel. Oh no. >> Come back. Uh >> oh. Uh >> oh. >> Well, so um so how you guys doing? Yeah, >> the um the rabbit's name is apparently fluffy but in Russian. >> Oh, can you pronounce it in Russ? Okay. I wouldn't know either. >> That was fun. Uh this is this is an example. >> This is a situation where Nathan needs to take care of which red button he's about to press. >> You didn't you didn't have a cat walk across the keyboard or anything. >> No, I've got no excuses. Oh my goodness. >> So many times. So, dear listener, if you were uh just listening to that, basically what I did was I booted myself out of the call, which is hysterical. Uh anyway, there we go. >> We found out >> it was amazing how much we got to talk to you behind your >> So, we'll knock it on the head there. You got 19. >> Yeah, >> we'll call it a day. Uh >> we found out the rabbit's name while you were gone. >> Oh, okay. And >> fluffy, but in Russian, >> which is what? How do you say that in in English? What's the >> my my my daughter just calls it Fluffy in Russian. >> Oh, that'll do. >> What's the rabbit's new name? >> That'll do. >> There you go. >> Okay. Anyway, I was trying to say at that point that there is our panel. This is the uh the Mly crew that we've assembled for today's show. So, hopefully if you've got any comments, uh let us know. What I was trying to do was I was trying to click the live chat button so that I could view some of the comments. And the live chat button is dangerously close to the drop yourself out of the call button. It would appear. But here we go. We got a few little comments coming up. So the rabbit needs to be added to your puppy's kittens lamb's loop. That's a good point. I should add that. And you mean the I'll add some rabbits to it. Uh, thank you very much. We'll do that. Uh, what else have we got? Thank you for joining us, by the way. Now, Gerard, yes, Gerard, get in. I got your name first time with That's the first time. Hello. Nice to have you with us. Oh, all right. You're there first. Fine. That's okay. Did press I did press all the red buttons. Uh, this is um Web Squadron. I am sorry about this. Yeah, it seems like our path did not cross at Word Camp EU. I responded to that by saying that I usually go to these events and end up in a closet with a mic. And that's exactly what happened this time. There was media rooms and they're always out on the far periphery of everything. >> I was basically in there. So sorry I didn't see you. That would have been nice. Um, shall I get the first weather report in? Says Full Works Plugins. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Good afternoon from a gray woking near London. Intermittent showers 14° centigrade. Allen. Now, I don't know what kind of weather Allan is, but it's it's looking a bit Allan out there, >> but I'm ching. >> Yeah, that joke. Uh, thank you, Alan, for joining us. Really appreciate it. I'm self-deating, says Web Squadron again, if I should attend Word Camp US, the flight times doesn't feel appealing. So, as regards Word Camp US, uh, it's going to be hot, and I don't think it's going to be hot like in a way that you and I, uh, from the UK can can, uh, can really understand. And I think it's like 45 67° centigrade. So, uh yeah, give it give it some. >> But it's a dry heat. >> Okay. Does that Does that help? >> That's what that's what they say. Yeah. >> And actually it Yeah, but it does help in that you know how um when it gets really hot and humid uh you feel like you can't breathe. At least in a dry heat, it's a little bit more tolerable. But honestly, it's going to be hot. >> Okay. I mean, >> you have to hydrate. Hydrate. >> And I'm from California and it's going to be hot. >> Yeah. >> Well, all I'm going to say is that if you're I I checked it out. The Grand Canyon is 333 odd miles drive away. So, if you do go, there is that like spectacle that might be worth dropping into your >> It's like a 5 hour drive. >> Yeah. It's not too bad, is it? Well, for for Brits, that's like the entire country, but uh if you look on the map of Arizona, it's like a tiny little bit of it. Uh so that's maybe worth thinking about. And he says he carries on if things align, I may go to Word Camp Asia and the proposed new flagship Word Camp India. It'll be like a grand slam of WC's. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, >> Reesew. Hello, folks. Good seeing you at Word Camp EU. Yeah, it was nice to see you as well, Ree. Lovely. Lovely. And then we got a bunch of emojis, people saying hi. Um D. Let's have a look. Surreal episode. It's It's often fairly surreal. Um I mean it never goes that weird, but it sometimes is a little bit weird. >> Two comments above that one though is my favorite. >> Fluffski. >> Yeah. For the rabbit. >> Fluffski. Okay. For the for the What's that? Is that the rabbit or is that the weather? I'm confused. >> No, that that's the Russian name for Fluffy. >> Russian. Is that actually That's so great. >> No, Reese made it up and that's >> Reese. I was hoping that was true. That sounded too good. Uh, anything over 22 degrees normally kills me. Yeah, it's going to be a lot over 22. Like double it and then add a little bit more. Um, and then the soles of your shoes can literally melt to the pavement if you walk too long sometimes where Word Camp Europe, >> sorry, Word Camp US is being held. So, look, a smattering of lovely comments already. Keep them coming. it makes the show, you know, really very interesting when we get loads of comments. The idea though is to talk about WordPressy things. So, let's begin that process. Uh, but first before that, very short promotional stuff. If you like what we're doing, put your email address into this box and we'll send you a couple of emails each week about the the content we create, the most recent podcast episode that I did. Can I urge you if you're into AI, like I'm kind of into AI, but I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about it or implementing it, go and listen to this episode with with Alex Standerford. Alex, by the end of it, I think Alex was a bit concerned that he'd said too much. Um, and it kind of he was a bit worried that he came across as a bit weird because he's he's given over so much of his life to AI. He started this process years ago where he kind of journals absolutely everything towards an AI and he said it's now got to the point where it's really adding up and adding value. He's a because it knows what he's like. It knows what his incentives are. It knows what drives him forward. He's got in his entire plug-in repository or multiple repositories in there. And he said the dots now really are adding up for him. Um, and I found that really interesting because I'm a bit of a lite when it comes to AI. So, meeting somebody who's been so bullish and so like gone homeo about doing it. Um, you might find that conversation really fascinating. Um, but if you find it to be weird like Alex thought it was going to be, uh, let me know as well. But, um, I thought it was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. The other thing I'm just going to quickly mention, um, this is also kind of AI related. Austin Ginder. I noticed earlier, Steve, before we hit record, I think you pronounced his surname differently to me, so maybe I've got that wrong. Um, but Austin did an episode with me um about how AI is really um making it possible for companies to get in front of um things like man-in-the-middle attacks and things like that. He has to put together a website called WP Beacon because he was on just sort of nosing around and noticed that a few of the plugins on some of his client I'm doing air quotes there client websites seem to have been taken over by a malicious actor. Turns out they were sold to a malicious actor who then baked into the code um back doors and malware and things like that. And so he's made it his life's mission, it would seem, to use AI to weed this stuff out. Uh, and so that's all very interesting as well. Go and check it out. I don't know if anybody wants to comment on any of that before I move into the news items this week. If you do, pipe up now. If not, I'll just move on. Okay? In which case, I will just move on. So, usually on the show, it was Michelle's idea actually many years ago, um, is to let the guests pop their favorite bits of the week at the beginning of the show. And so, Steve's popped a few in this week. So, I'm kind of going to hand it over to Steve because um, well, they're the ones that he mentioned. The first one is over on wordpress.orgnews. It was written by Matt Mullenweg about three days ago and it's called Protect the Shire. What did you uh what did you have in mind when you added this, Steve? >> Well, this links directly to Austin's work you were talking about on the podcast. >> Yep. >> And it it may even be a 100% direct reaction to it that at the moment if you release a WordPress plug-in, they're going to wait 24 hours before it actually releases so they can run security scans on it. it. Maybe it's a slightly different problem to the one Austin started off and kind of got some publicity for talking about, but it's all part of the same core issue that basically AI is making security so much more difficult now. Um, I think Austin has been saying that February of this year was a complete like 180 degree turn for him with security. Suddenly vulnerabilities that had never been found before were getting found and exploited. Um, and so Matt's response has been to lock down the WordPress repo for 24 hours after every release now. >> So kind of curious. I don't know if you saw this bit. I don't know if this number seems to be a a big number or not, but he says right at the top of the article, he's trying to paint the picture of how AI has made most software probably more vulnerable to things because what used to take a human researcher many hours to figure out now point an AI at the codebase and perhaps you can find them in minutes. And things like Chrome, which is mentioned here, the Chrome browser is obviously open source. You can download that. uh 429 security fixes were patched um just very recently in the latest release. So I'm guessing that's an extraordinarily high number that Chrome have had to release. Um and yeah, so the idea being that from now on we're going to give uh plug-in developers when you update your plug-in 24 hours until that is then available on theorg repo. The idea, I think, is to figure out how it all works out. Like figure out if they can turn the AI around to reduce that time down into hours and minutes possibly in the future. But for now, they're going to point the AI at updates to um to your plug-in repository and hopefully find the bits and pieces that may or may not be lurking in there. Um yeah, that's it's quite a change, isn't it? I suppose I don't know how this will work with critical security patches. So, let's say for example, Steve, your plug-in has a critical vulnerability in it and it's widely known out in the wild that there's a critical vulnerability in it. Do we still wait for 24 hours or does that get a pass? I don't know how that'll all kind of work, but um yeah. >> Yeah, you may have to write into the plugins team for an exception. Um, we maybe like five, six years ago, we've been on the other end of this with a um, a massive security problem with one of our plugins and the WordPress plugins team were awesome and they did a a force push of the fix to >> Oh, yeah. >> to everyone who had the the plug-in installed. And that was super useful. And I'm pretty sure the WordPress plug-in team would be flexible enough to to fix something like that if it happened again. >> Yeah. Well, maybe you can be bumped to the top of the uh the AI or human review queue uh so that it becomes a matter of hours. Um yeah. Anyway, that was an interesting piece uh written by Matt himself. Michelle or Mark, if you've got anything to add, do it now. Otherwise, I will just move along gently. Before I do that, I'll just raise a couple of these comments. So the first one is this one uh from full works plugins. Alex and I are of the same cloth. So referring to Alex Standford earlier, I have built I I have building retained knowledge about my personal goals and align to business strategy. Yeah, that's basically what he's been doing and it's been sort giving him some profound insights. I can see the positives in them using AI to secure websites. I do wonder though how accurate the AI will be. This is always my concern um as well and how they handle zero. Oh, okay. There you go. You've literally written what I just suggested as well. Zero days within 24 hours. That's a very good point. Um, it would be nice if they could open source their prompt so that we can run the same tests ourselves like they do with the plug-in check. Oh, that's interesting. >> That's a that's a good idea. I like >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I wonder if there's some secret source there that they don't wish to decluse me disclose. I can't see. I'm I'm thinking about that for a moment. I I think the answer is no. Yeah, good suggestion. I like that. >> Um, and then carries on with, of course, we speaking for us already use AI to yeah, to do extra security checks. Okay, thank you. Keep the comments coming. That's great. Let's put the slides back up or the share the bits and pieces on the screen. And then this is a slight segue. We got a new wapoo related to Is this new? Is this Gonal Wapoo new? But it was certainly called out in that article. Well, created June 5th, 2026. >> Okay. So, it is new. This is the new uh this is the new game by Matt. >> Oh, is it? Oh, yeah. Okay. >> Okay. So, it is Matt. So, this is this is the AI uh Wapoo. I guess that's going to be overlooking your code. The new Wapoo for that. I I actually have a I have a strong like for that one. I'm a big fan of Lord of the Rings, and so I'm I'm kind of drawn to that. But let's move on. Next one is over on the Word Fence uh blog. I'm just going to say at the outset that Word Fence do this quarterly report and and I'll just sort of skim quickly and you'll get an idea why we can't really cover all of it. It's there's a lot basically is one way to summarize it. But Steve, was there anything you wanted to draw out of this in particular? Well, I put in the link to Matt's post plus this one which says that basically um vulnerability reports are going way way way up this year according to >> Word Fence and also one about Patchack which said that they are getting lots and lots of fake AI reports and they've started to ban people from their bug bounty problems because people are sending in hallucinated reports. And it's all >> part of the same topic basically. But >> it's AI and security. It's a bit of a it's a bit of a nightmare, isn't it? So in this one, the word fence report, I don't know if you can if you if you're listening to this, apologies. It's going to be hard for me to summarize it, but basically on the the sort of M uh the UVP, if you like, the sort of hero item of this is that most things are up in terms of security problems. Everything seems to have gone up by a significant amount of they're claiming uh during the previous quarter a 23.7% rise in total vulnerabilities published. This is of course Word Fenc's uh own data. 20.6% increase in high threat vulnerabilities now up to 158. Common and dangerous vulnerabilities a a 98% increase but the number is 198. So it's not like this 48,000 or anything. So maybe that's a little bit sanguin. Waff attacks blocked is now down by a small amount 3% but still kind of interesting that figure you would want to go up rather than down. Um a brute force attacks up 15% at 16 billion and then sites infected 1.4% rise up to 700 sorry 474,000. There's a lot in this article. Um, >> so we started to get a whole new category of email from uh Word Fence. I think mainly it used to be like once a month because we've got like 20 plus plugins. Once a month we'd get an email from Word Fence to say, "Hey, you have a security issue in this plug-in. It's minor, >> medium, very occasionally serious." Um, we haven't been getting those lately. Word friends have been sending this us these emails saying, "We had a report about your plug-in, but we realized it was nonsense and we canceled it." Like, huh? Okay. Um, this like almost every week they're saying, "We got a hallucinated report about your plug-in and we blocked it and we're just letting you know that we investigated and found it to be nothing." >> It's really interesting and that links perfectly to this patch stack piece. Patchstack have what's called a bug bounty program whereby if you discover something of worth which will help you know drive the WordPress security landscape forwards you can submit it to them and depending on the criteria that it that it falls under and I won't bore you with all that but you can you can be rewarded for that and obviously if you tie it's it was guaranteed to happen really wasn't it if you can exchange money for knowledge about a security uh problem. Well, point AI at that and come up with a load of problems that maybe are not that significant and hope to be paid out. That's exactly basically what Patchack have discovered and they've had to tighten up the rigging um of their bug bounty program and now that the topline item basically is that if you submit AI slop reports, you're going to be banned for a week, which actually to me seemed quite lenient. Um yeah, >> a week. I was thinking it'd be more like a year or something like that, you know, to really dissuade people from doing it, but they've got some new so there's a lot of data about how they've established that this is happening and you know asking people to honor some new criteria, but yeah, temporary ban is basically the the bottom line item and they've got some new criteria for what now will qualify. So they're basically tightening the whole thing up. So it's going to be more difficult to qualify. Um therefore hopefully will be more meaningful in the future. So again, anybody want to add anything to those or should we press on? All right. Okay. In which case we will press on. Um just a little thing. I I don't really have anything to say about this other than that word camp Europe happened. Um, as always, a very very very big thank you to anybody who touched that entire process. You know, if you were on the organizing team or were a volunteer at the event or whatever your point of reference was, that was an incredible event. The venue was lovely, which always helps, but it obviously the people kind of really make the whole thing tick. And it was incredibly well done as far as I could see. I um I had an absolutely lovely time. I hope that you did too. And if you were involved in the, you know, the organization of that, I hope that you're having a bit of a well- earned uh rest at this point. None of I don't think any of you three were there, were you? Uh, no. >> Unfortunately, not. Okay. No, it was it was really good. The venue was great. And a bit of a bit of a hat tip. If you've ever thought about Oh, sorry. If you've never thought about going to the city of Kkow, wow, that was that was the one of the most sublimely cool bits. Krakow is utterly stunning. Um, and quite compact. So, if you land in Kkow, a lot of the things that you would like to see are within easy walking distance. You know, 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 3 minutes there. And um, it was absolutely marvelous. So definitely get on a plane to Krakow if you're short of holiday ideas. Three or four days there is going to be time well spent. And yeah, the organizers help users did great indeed. I'm always amazed by how an event like that can basically be run by volunteers. It's a miracle that that does happen. Um you can read this article. I'm I've got something on the screen entitled What Happened at Word Camp Europe 2026. It was written just a couple of days ago after the whole thing had wrapped up. So if you want to go and check it out, you can. Um yeah, they had um the the sort of topline item I suppose the keynote if you like was uh was the folk at CERN um who of course were the uh that was the sort of founding place where the web actually began. So I didn't actually manage to make that talk but kind of be interested to watch it back uh which you can do here. Two worlds collide WordPress at CERN. Go and check that out if you wish. All righty. Uh again, I'll just pause in case anybody wants to jump in. Nope. All right. Right then. >> You You got all the Americans on the podcast this time around. >> I know. Yeah. But usually usually Word Camp Europe is about 50% Americans as far as I can work out. And that I think that was definitely the case this time. There was a lot of people from all over the world. There's, you know, the your usual kind of hosting companies bringing their North American teams and things like that. So, there was definitely a um definitely a lot of people from all over. And the numbers felt good to me. I know that we're sort of trying to like make ourselves feel good about the community and things like that, but I think there was 2,600 it was something like 37 uh tickets uh turned into actual people showing up. So I think 2,600 plus people actually uh attended the event. And it certainly felt like that. It was one of those events. >> That's kind of precoid numbers, isn't it? >> Right. Right. Well, yeah. I think there's this idea that one day it'll get back to 3,000 or something. Perhaps that's not realistic. But what was really nice was instead of it being one of those great big single floor event spaces, this was stacked over four floors basically. So each floor was not that big. Um, and so it felt busy no matter where you stood. If that does that make sense? Is that do you understand what I mean? It just felt like it was happening and busy. And I would imagine that most sponsors, not every sponsor, but I imagine that most sponsors got a good deal from it because like I said, everywhere felt busy. There was not really too many parts that felt like they were the far-flung corner that nobody actually ended up walking to. So that was good. Um, and I've got Reese here saying that all the Europeans are recovering from Word Camp Europe with the with the exception of Nathan. No, I'm totally recovering, but I've uh you know, I've had a couple of coffees, Ree, and I'll fl I'll flop when this is done. >> Well, weren't you telling us before we got on that uh you were just doing your old man thing and not going to any of the parties? >> Well, there was a lot of I have to I definitely have to sort of protect myself a little bit. I'm I'm of a certain age, let's put it that way. And if I go go into some of these go into some of these uh I don't know like the after parties and things and you see people jing around it. It's not I can't do that anymore. >> It's all a bit embarrassing. >> Simply using the word jive the young kids. >> That puts you in the old man category right there. >> Yeah. Yeah. and and but also Crack Kov was such a revelation that I really wanted to spend I get a lot out of walking around places like that. I don't know if you're like me but I I really enjoy stuff like that wandering around and sitting and having coffees and meals and stuff and so that that to me represented a fantastic use of my time. So I did that. I did turn up to a few things but I didn't I didn't go to as many as I often would. Uh right. Okay. Right. Let's move on to this one then. So this is very much in the domain of WordPressy stuff now. So on the repository website um Gutenberg 23.3 ships with experimental customizable WordPress dashboard. I'm not quite sure what's going on here. So you know when you log into a WordPress uh website typically you'll end up at the dashboard. And for the longest time, certainly as long as I've been using WordPress, there's been little widgets that you can drag around and pop them into different places and hide them and show them and what have you. Um, but we now have this. I'll pop it on the screen for you to see. There's only a little screenshot there. I don't know if that's of any help, but I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference that feels to me to what we've already got. Am I missing something or does it just seem like it's the same thing? Yeah. >> Is it built with blocks? >> So, I don't know. That's an interesting point. Now, the thing is what you can do is there is like a masonry layout. So, if I just sort of slide down here and give you a little bit more of an insight into it. Can you see there's options to make it a little bit more like you can customize the number of grids, you can customize the width of the tiles, you can make it masonry and standard grid. And maybe you're right. Maybe there's going to be an option to sort of build your own blocks now that you know perhaps without code or something like that now that we've got the um this approach. I'm not entirely sure. But um anyway, that is coming. If you want to make use of it, you can do that if you uh go and install the Gutenberg plugin. 23.3 will give you the option to do that. Uh it says here, Gutenberg 23.3 has shipped with an experimental customizable dashboard that lets users add, move, resize. Okay, maybe resize is new >> and arrange widgets on the WP admins home screen is the first testable preview of a long discussed overhaul. Okay, that's the bit that I missed. This isn't uh this we're not trying to build something here which is finished. This is just the framework by the sounds of it. It's just the initial bones of what it's going to be like. Uh the new dashboard is built on a drag and drop layout and ships with a full set of widgets out the box. you know, the usual welcome, quick draft, site health, and so on. Each widget automatically adapts to the different tile sizes, and individuals can, sorry, and users can choose which ones to display, adjust the number of columns, and resize individual widgets to suit their workflow. Again, all of that sort of seems similar to what we've got already, but anyway, there you go. Um, anybody on that one? Probably not. I that when you first log in that screen that comes up that you're looking at there, >> how many of us actually pay a lot of attention to that screen? I'm usually on a mission to do something else. I bypass it all together. Um if I want to know what's going on with one of my plugins, I go to the plugin, you know, all of those kinds of things. I I don't use this as a tool. And I'm wondering if I should or if I'm like most of us. Do >> you know what's really curious is I'm exactly like you. I actually disable them all. I go into the options for that and I turn them all off so that basically I've got a blank page and I I try as often as possible never to go there. But I'm kind of betting that Steve could make some use of this because couldn't you like create maybe you have this already, I don't know, like a widget to say things that are I don't know in a pending status and need to be looked at by an editor or something like that. You could, we've had some people use it, but it's fairly limited in terms of in terms of I don't know what exactly it's limited in terms of, but people don't seem to use it. >> Yeah, I'm with you there. >> But, you know, when you log into like your CRM or your um I don't know your project management tool, the dashboard is about the most useful part of the tool in my estimation. you know, if you build it correctly and and you can get that summary of everything that's going on CRMwise or project management wise. I don't know, like there's 12 things that you need to achieve by the end of the week or something like that and here they are in priority order and things. >> I I'm struggling to see how WordPress adapts to that, but your Publish Press plugin, it felt like there was a a way to perhaps leverage that, but I don't know. >> Well, you know, if you look at Yeah. I mean, MainWP is all about that overview page. You go, you look at that overview page and you see everything you need to see right there. And um I'm wondering if something like this is useful for if you have various levels of users within the site and you set up their dashboards the way they need to see it. Um, okay. But, but I'm like Michelle. I go and straight to whatever I need to go to and I look mostly at the sidebar. then I and don't even pay attention to what's going on in the dashboard. But if I have like an editor or something like that, you know, someone with an editor role or something like that, I could see the use of setting up their dashboards or letting them set up their dashboards the way that they want to with just the the overview there. >> Yeah, that's interesting. I use MainWP on a more or less daily basis and you you land on your proprietary sort of dashboard, don't you? >> Right. Yeah. um you you're sort of separated out. It's like a SAS view. It's like it's like a you've got a SAS app built inside a WordPress, if you know what I mean, but without the SAS. >> Um and and I use that all the time. And it's exactly that. It gives me the top level items of what needs updating, you know, how many plugins, how many themes, how many core updates, and all the other myriad things that you can do >> or whatever else you want to add to it or well, we got some thoughts coming in. Um >> so there is a um >> uh an offshoot of real time collaboration which is called presence some the name has >> presence API. >> Yes. So I've seen dashboard mockups where you log log into the new version of this WordPress dashboard and you would see everyone else who's logged into the site normally with like a a little smiley avatar next to it >> and you see what they're doing. So, I think the new idea of the dashboard is something like that that you would log in and say, "Hey, Mark is editing this page. Uh, Michelle is editing this post. Um, Nathan is doing updating an event." >> Um, that perhaps by the time WordPress 7.1 comes around, this would be more dynamic, more live, showing you what's literally happening on the site. No, >> what's curious for me is that basically most of my endeavors in the WordPress space have been solo things. So, it's been me logging into a website. So, it's kind of hard to see the utility because I know why I'm logging in. So, I can avoid that dashboard. But, that's a really good point and I I use the example of TechCrunch a lot because I can only imagine how many people are logged into the TechCrunch WordPress instance at one time because I don't know how many pieces they write a day. Maybe it's 10 pieces a day. And so all of that there will be multiple people logging in and and WordPress could literally become their kind of internet really, couldn't it? And so having that intel about I don't know who's doing what at this time and notes about what they did and achieved and what needs to be handed off is kind of really interesting. I'll put a few little notes up. We've had a few bits of commentary about this. So uh Alan again, yeah, sorry Alan, I keep saying uh full full works plugins. Thank you. Um, it says, "Personally, I thought there was no real change either." So, yeah, it looks broadly similar, doesn't it? But maybe, um, Nomad Skateboarding says, "Maybe the end goal would be to have all of your data points end up there on the home screen." Yeah. Okay, that's a good point. And as you said, this is just a direction that they're going in. The widgets they shipped will be added to shortly. Great. Thank you. Um, back to Alan. You really need to look at desktop mode. It is exactly what you're asking and uh what you're asking and automatic are involved. Thank you very much. Um and I guess this may be a conversation between Alan and Novad skateboarding fully checked out the last episode from a couple of weeks ago. Dashboard was talked about. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Right. In which case if we've got that we will move on. There was something else in there but I'll leave you to read that uh article. There's a few bits buried. >> I wish you could color code them. Oh, that's a nice idea. Yeah, >> right. Because right now it's just all this data in your face, which is probably why I don't care for it. It's a lot of over stimulation with a lot of information. >> Um I like health site health status, but what if like critical updates were in a red box? So you log in and you're like, well, this plugin has a critical update. As opposed to seeing, well, I got five plugins to update. I'll get to them later. You know, things like that. Things that because of a colorcoded system. I love I love a good dashboard. I can waste a whole half day configuring a dashboard with with meaningless things, you know. So, uh yeah. Okay. Interesting. Um and now I'm trying to zoom away and so I can scroll to the next thing. Right. There we go. Anyway, that was on uh the repository Gutenberg 23.3 uh ships experimental customizable WordPress dashboard. We'll be coming back to the repository a little bit. However, this is going to start, this piece that you're looking at now is going to start um a conversation about community. There's going to be a few pieces that I've put together in a row that are all to do with community. Um Courtney, who was on the call a bit ago, I don't know if she's still with us, but she was on the call a little while ago. Courtney has been talking about uh contributor dashboards for a very long time. She's been wanting to get this launched, I think, to raise the awareness of what people are doing out in the WordPress space. So, I don't know, Courtney, if you've got any commentary that you want to add into this, but here we are. If you go to wpcontributor-b.org, um, I don't know the status of this. Like, I'm not sure who's in charge of it. It I'm not sure who put this out there, whether it's an automatic thing or not. I genuinely don't know. But it will it will give a summary of a few things. There's a couple of menu items on the left. There's this ladder view. There's the cohorts view um which is like this waterfall effect. And if you don't understand any of it, if you just go to the about tab, then that'll explain everything that's going on like how it works and what the different views are. But if we just go back to the wrapped one, I poked around in this for about 10 minutes earlier today and I I found something quite interesting which I want to share with you. So, what we're looking at now is the last 12 months, and it says that there were 486,771 contributions. Let's assume that that data is accurate and that that represents a, you know, a decent summation of it. Um, 1,333 contri contributions on average per day. That equates to. And then there's a month-by-month chart and unique contributors per month and and and slight and more. And then I'm going to click on some different years which will filter by year and and I just want you to watch as things happen. So if we go to 2019, I'm just going to get you to concentrate on this top number. So this is the story for 2019. 1,155,000 contributions. Skip to 2020, 1,441,000 contributions. 2021 1,214,000. That's taking a little bit of a swing south at that point. Skip to 2022. Takes a bit of a swing down at this point. We're down to 1 million uh 31,000. Now 2023, watch what happens. Starts to go down 964,000. 2024 89,000. 2025 592,000 contributions and the last 12 months 486. So compare and contrast. Let's go to let's go to the most optimistic month which I think sorry year which I think was that one 2020 1.4 million the last 12 months 486,000. Now, I'll I'll let you uh let you pontificate what that means, but if if this data is true, it seems to show a decline in contributions to the project. And I don't know if anybody's got anything they want to add. >> I think the bigger interesting thing is the number under that, which is the number of contri. >> If you look at the number of contributors, it's >> half. Yeah. Do you know that's interesting. I didn't look at that. Do you mind if I just spend a moment just looking through that? Go ahead. >> So directly underneath that number that I was reading out loud is a much smaller uh number representing the number of individuals involved. So 200 200,000 in 2019 240,000 in 2020,000 2021 2022 177,000 2023 166,000 2024 142,000 119,000 in 2025 and in the last 12 months 102,000. So let's see. Yeah, it's down by roughly 50% from 2022 or 2021. Okay, that is interesting. So, it's no surprise that the uh the number of contributions are down because it would appear that the number of contributors are down. Um, but the data is >> the reason Oh, I was going to say the reason I find that interesting is because that kind of does feed to the narrative of people leaving WordPress or it could. I'm not I'm not saying it does. I mean, it's one data point. That's all it is. But, >> um, but it's it certainly is an interesting number to me. >> Yeah. >> If you go to Oh, we have the cat. >> Yeah, there's the cat. >> Michelle's cat. Let's just spend a moment >> admiring the cat. >> This is Stella. Her name is easy to pronounce in any language. What's her name? >> I was gone for a Stella. >> Oh, that's easy. >> Yeah. Nice. And she um she's she was mad cuz I was gone for a whole week, but she seems to have forgiven me since I gave her treats this morning. So, >> if if I can possibly find it, I'm going to get a screenshot of when she just turned and showed us her rear end. >> Rear end. Yeah, >> that was great. >> Cats are very proud of their rear end. Put it in your face as often as possible. >> Uh, right. Sorry. I apologize whoever I just interrupted with the cat thing. Um, Steve, was it you you were talking? >> So, if you go to drupal.org/metrics, they have something similar, and their data goes back to all the way back to like 2005, I think. Um, and they break it down in different ways than um, the WordPress contributor dashboard does, but you can tell pretty clearly that the Drupal project peaked in like 2012. >> Yeah. >> And it's been a >> Yeah. >> a slow and steady decline since then. Um, so I think obviously the solution is never to publish any metrics or statistics. Yeah, that's right. Unless Unless you can all going off. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what though? What's curious is that I can I don't know if it's just me, but I can really parse that chart. I can I can take in the information from that really straightforwardly. Whereas when we were back on the the WordPress one, let me see if I can find it. Where's it gone? It was this one. Uh clicking through and trying to remember what I just saw. Uh I find that more difficult. But the the problem with that is the graph wouldn't look very good, would it? It would definitely be sort of trending south to smaller bars. Um, we've got a few comments coming in about this. Courtney, uh, first of all, back to the dashboards. Courtney says, "Color coding that ship accessible, um, defaults for the dashboard that we were talking about just a moment ago would be a bit of a dream." So, that's good. And then back probably now to the um, contributor dashboard as opposed to the WordPress dashboard. Unfortunately, I've not had time to contribute much to the contributor to contributor sustainability efforts lately. That Yeah, but I know that that was a big thing of yours, wasn't it? It was something you were very, very keen on. Uh, please don't take this the wrong way, says web squadron, but I see less younger than 30 years attending word camp or participating in contributor day and that makes you wonder about the future contributions. Yeah, I I don't think anybody can doubt that at all. Imran, I've been calling you web squad the entire time because it's written in front of me. Uh Imran, I think you're absolutely right. If you go to WordPress events, then the age demographic skews older, not younger. Although, Imran, I had this conversation sitting on a balcony like three days ago looking down on Word Camp Europe and I was with a friend and we tried to have this conversation like we said, how many 20somes do we think we can see? And then we did 30somes and 40 and obviously you know we were guessing how old people were. But we were actually quite surprised in a good way how many people in in their 20ies we thought we saw because I my assumption was it would have been very very few and I was pretty surprised. Now I couldn't tell you why they were there. Maybe they were there because they were you know compelled to go on behalf of a company or what have you. Not really sure, but um I share your concern, but Word Camp Europe did make me feel a little bit more um sanguin. Yeah, of course 2020 was the COVID year. That's a good point. And uh Creouse, I think is the name. Hello. I don't know if we've met before. Uh however, when you are new to the WordPress ecosystem, it's anything but obvious where and how to contribute. Okay, good point. Yeah, if you can't get involved, then that's going to make it difficult. Oh gosh, there's quite a few comments. Patricia in replying to Imran says, "Oh, like just what I said. Uh, I saw new and young faces at Word Camp EU and the WP credits and campus connect initiatives are are precisely there for onboarding a new generation." Um and then Iran comes back with me and other influence did notice the lessening numbers for contributions and we do wonder what state WP will be in uh in five years time. Uh so okay I'm just raising a few comments D. The contributor dashboards are constantly being improved and finesse are uh added to weighted contributions especially less visible such as WP WC organizers and so on and so forth. Okay. Yeah, we literally were up high. So, we were looking down in the most literal sense of the word. Not brilliant. I love that. You should quote that. >> By the way, I I had that ex I had that exact same thought when he said, >> "Oh, no. Oh, so there were four three four stories and we were sitting on the top one and so we could see all the other three beneath us." But yeah, uh my name is Christina. We have not met before. Oh, hello. Nice to meet you, Christina. stay with us and make more comments. We love it when you do. >> Okay. Anything else? >> I've al I've often thought about that problem or challenge of how do people learn to contribute? How do you know where to go to do anything other than download, you know, the the when you first land on WordPress.org? Um, and I I had the idea to create a website that was like a mall kiosk where it's like you are here. If you want to do this, go this way. If you want to do this, go this way. Kind of like plan your adventure. >> Yeah. >> It was just a lot more than I was able to pull together. So, I let that domain expire. >> If if I go back to Sorry, you go, Steve. >> There's a on the contributor dashboard. Did I notice there's a ladder? >> There is a ladder. Let me pop it on the screen quickly. Um, and it's right there, >> which I is one way to um I'm not sure exactly how they define these tasks, but people can get started by simply posting on the forum and then maybe I think this is meant to track sort of what how many people just enter the ecosystem at a basic level and then move on to more advanced tasks like contributing releasing plugins for example. I think elsewhere there's on the site there's some definitions of exactly what they're tracking here. >> Well, the nice the nice thing about this is at some point in the near future when this is when the the when the data has been fully explained, but also when there's more data and maybe the dash the contributor dashboard is more fully fleshed out. By the way, we've got filtering and things on the right hand side. um maybe there'll be some utility in that and and it will give us a nice target of initiatives that we need to start creating in order to make the project successful in the future. But I would just like to very quickly go back to and I can't find it now. Yeah, here we go. um Patricia's comment about um WP credits and campus connect initiatives because that as far as I can see they are at the at the minute the most credible way of getting young folk uh into uh WordPress. Not only are they combining with real world institutions like like the University of Pisa for example, but they're also finding homes in places where people already are and putting on events where people can come along and try WordPress out and things like that. So kind of meetup feel to it if you like but with with a more educational bent to it. Um so yeah there we go. And then Patricia is back um saying to learn how to start contributing there was the contributor mentorship program. We should restart it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything on that or shall we move on? I think it's time to move on. Yeah. Let me just make that comment go away. Okay. We're back to the um WordPress, sorry, the repository. And this is something which has come back after a few years of hiatus. Uh so Kevin O'Hashi, I want to say that's how you say it. I could be wrong. Um had been publishing an annual kind of hosting review. It was called review signal, I believe, the the ben the hosting benchmark in the WordPress space. My estimation from looking back over the previous years is that it was kind of one of the most um credible ways of finding out whether or not a hosting company um I don't know met up to the the claims that they would have on their homepage, things like that. And it's had to take a bit of a hiatus because essentially the tooling that um Kevin was using um instead of it being something that he could plunder freely, it then became paywalled. And so the the way that he was using it was probably going to give him a quarter of a million dollar a year bill. So okay, yeah, I get it. And so um Kevin did what all open source folk do. went away and he built his own version of the same thing and it's called orderly ape and is open source so you can test it out and um basically has launched the same survey. The topline items are that Pressible and um what was the other one? Big Scoot seem to do really well, but honestly don't take my word for it or the repository's word for it. If you were to go to the actual report, so it's wphostingbenchmarks.com and then you'll be able to go to the latest one which is the 2026 survey. Uh it's all broken down by firstly WordPress as a whole and then you can click on the cost of the hosting. So less than $25, 25 to 50 and various different price points. Then you can look at Woo Commerce where far less companies came in. I think these companies volunteer themselves into this survey. So I don't think he Kevin goes out and finds them randomly. I think it's more they say they want to be a part of it. Um and you can see the ones with a star um seem to do well in some way. half a star. Obviously, it's going well in some respects, but the full star. So, we got I don't know, what have we got? 34 SP, Green Geeks, um Lightning Base, GoDaddy, Pressible, WP Buzz, who I confess I'd not heard of. Um and WPX, they all do uh well. And then if you click on each one of these cards, let's for example, oh, I don't know, go with well, I mentioned it a minute ago. Let's go with Pressible. Then you drill down into a a what can only be described as a wealth of data. I mean, look, I love what even is that? What the what is that chart? Uh and it goes on and on and on and on and on and uh Kevin, remarkable. Uh you're obviously addicted to this kind of stuff and I'm glad that you are because somebody uh needs to do it. So there you go. Anybody want to add anything to that? No. No. I don't know. Okay. In which case that will just say go say the URL again wphostingbenchmarks.com. Uh go check it out and you can check out Ray's piece about it. Right. Last one from the repository this week. Actually, do you know what? I'm not sure I'm going to dwell on this one unless one of you wishes to dwell on it. It's called contributors launch FSE. So full site editing style outreach program to get real time collaboration ready for WordPress 7.1. I know that in the past, Steve, this has been very much something that you're interested in. Uh, so I don't know if this carries any interest for you, this particular piece, but the idea being that in order to get 7.1 fully fitted out with real-time collaboration, there's now an outreach program which you can uh make yourself available for uh in order to help test it out. Perhaps hosting companies would be the best people or individuals highly highly interested in it. So Steve, >> yeah, I don't think they had much time to to get all the hosting companies involved for the 7.0 release and for real-time collaboration is something that really it can impact the load on a site. It needs to be done very carefully. So, uh, I think this time they're doing a full testing process with all the hosting partners and trying to to get a a lot more real world usage before they consider whether it's ready for 7.1. >> Yeah. And um the the headline on this really I'll just read the the sort of short excerpt which Rey has put together just says a new outreach program modeled on the FSE experiment wants early adopters testing collaborative editing across hosting environments before beta 1 on the 15th of July. And so I'm reading from that that they want the experimentation to be done by the 15th of July, not they want you to express an interest uh in participating by the 15th of July. So again, go and check out Race Peace if that feels like you. If you wish to be a part of that, you can uh you can get involved. And again, I'll just quickly move on if nobody's got anything to add to that. Okay. I've not se Okay. I was just about to say I haven't seen too many calamities in the WordPress space, but we're going to feature two of them uh this week. Um I don't honestly I don't like I never like to call people out for doing things that were obviously a little bit silly, but I am going to mention this because I think this was with hindsight a little bit silly. So if you're one of Site Ground's users, Site Ground is a a hosting company. I forget where they're based out of, but I I think it might be Serbia. Um, if that's wrong, apologies. So, they've been in business for many, many years and slowly but surely gaining a a good reputation, I would say. You know, I think many people have heard of them and a lot of people seem to have good things to say about them. But a lot of that goodwill drained extremely quickly. So something that was very hard to create, goodwill in the hosting space, it turns out can be decimated in a moment. They installed last week an the AI agent by site ground plug-in on over 1 million websites without any kind of consultation. This piece says so caveat mtor this is on the WP Mayor website. Um, and when contacted about it, the the defense basically seems to have been something along the lines of uh it it's okay. It didn't do anything. It was preparing for the WordPress 7.1 um AI things that are going to come along and so we're just getting people familiar with the interface. That didn't seem to go down too well because people said, you know, that's a bit tonedeaf. We don't want people going in and installing things on our website. we've got clients that we now have to explain where this came from. Maybe clients will start using it and misusing it, you know, misunderstanding what it's for and what have you. And they very very quickly gained I mean look at that chart. I mean it's pretty bad. Uh one five-star review. I wonder who did that one by the way. That'd be curious to see. But 35 one-star reviews. I don't know if the situation has changed. I imagine it has since then. But um anyway, they tried to defend themselves and the the author of this article was a pains to point out, well, good on them. At least they stepped up and didn't just sort of try to ignore the problem. But I think what we've learned from this is don't install plugins on people's websites unless you get a permission. Um because it'll be a bit of a bit of a PR disaster and it might start to hurt your bottom line. Because people didn't just seem to equate this with, oh, they've installed a plugin, they equated it with, I'm never using site ground again. That's how bad it got very, very quickly. So, any thoughts on this? >> Uh, Reys has a comment that says they did send out an email beforehand, but it was sent midafter afternoon on a Friday in EU time. >> Interesting. Thank you, Ree. Appreciate that. Are you one of their customers just out of interest? because the article does make the so thank you Ree that's well pointed out and I should have said that the article makes the point that site ground claimed to have sent out an email and the author of this article made the point that they don't think they got it and maybe like you Ree just didn't get a chance to open it up. I don't really know. But um if they did a Bulgaria uh he says uh Ree says thank you. Um what what what's your opinion on it though, Ree? I'm curious to know if you are one of their customers, would that be something that you would not uh wish for them to have done? And maybe they could have marketed that through a series of emails with a button saying, "Here's where to install it from as opposed to um them, you know, actually just pulling it into your website without uh without you getting permission." Elliot joining us. Hello, Elliot. Elliot and I hung out at Word Camp Europe. That was nice. Nice to meet you, Elliot. Um he says get permission particularly if it's related to AI. Yeah. Uh and then Ree I presume in the in reply to me saying are you a customer? He says I am for now. Oh that's almost >> I still have a few sites over there and I just went through my email um trash because I just delete a lot of things all the time as we all do probably. Uh I don't see an email from them. It may have gone to spam in which case I cleared it probably at some point but uh I did not receive an email in my inbox from them about that although I do have several emails about other things. So >> interesting. >> I think I think one of the things you have to consider is your demographic here. >> People install WordPress as a self-hosted solution because they want to have control of everything. And so anytime you're reminded that you don't, it doesn't it doesn't land well. And I think that that's what's happening here is >> is is and then of course you add the AI element into it, which is a you know, you can probably split it down the middle with people who like pineapple on pizza, you know, and and don't. >> Uh some people are all for AI, some people aren't. And so you add that to the mix and it I I think that it probably was not well thought out as far as how they rolled it out. Um >> they could have done a better job ahead of time with recognizing who their demographic was and >> and marketing to that. >> We are a curious bunch, aren't we? Because if I'm subscribing to let's say a SAS platform, let's go with CRM again because we were talking about that earlier. If they roll out a new feature and they switch it on, I I don't care. Like that's the deal. I want all the new features, but there is something fairly special about my WordPress website. And I think you summed it up there perfectly, Mark. It's mine. And when you notice suddenly for a moment, actually, it it isn't mine, is it? It's not entirely mine. Look, somebody was able to do a thing and it's not mine. Um it makes I don't know there's some intuition which sort of not sure about that. Um so uh Iran says he one of their customers uh I'm one of their customers. It didn't bother me hugely as I got an email two weeks ago. Imran if you can locate that email I'm curious to ask to see it does that email ask your permission or does it just tell you that that's what you're going to that they're going to do? And if if they just tell you what they're going to do, did you get an opt out option or is there a way of sort of saying no, no, no, don't do this for me. Um because I think that's that's where this the line is drawn here. Ree says you're not a fan. Also got clients and I had a few question. Oh, so you had to actually field client questions about it. That's not great, is it? Suddenly wasting your time on something you didn't need to uh didn't need to bother with. Uh agreed totally with Mark says Ree. If if this was a free product, you can't complain, but I pay £500 per year uh with an account with them. Uh if I'm not going over certain limits, leave me be. Um and then finally, site ground have a speed security plug-in in the repo and and they were opt in for old accounts. Yeah. Yeah. Um and Irram says he's deleted the email. Yeah. Don't recall it asking for permission or giving an opt out. I think that's maybe the bit, isn't it Immran? Maybe that's the bit people are sort of concerned about is that that agency left you and you just woke up in the morning and it was there. Steve, I think you're trying to say something. >> Yeah. I wonder if there's a throughine between the last article on real time collaboration and this site ground issue and I think the next one which you have teed up which is cadence maybe. >> Yeah, I think you got that. Yeah, >> we we're living in a world where I think automatic is doing they call it like a radical speed month maybe they just finished. Y >> that people are using AI everything is so fast but what we've seen in all three cases from foresight editing to this site ground issue to cadence was they all tried to push it through so fast like the cadence thing just was a lot of the affiliates were complaining there was no kind of preparation of them there was no kind of advanced warning it just happened and happened overnight and the site ground users are complaining that it just happened and uh foresight editing really just needed more time to mature. I was there was a rush to get it in the core when it wasn't quite ready. >> Yeah, >> these things take time. Even if um even if you can do something in a month doesn't mean you should. that in site ground's case in retrospect maybe they should have started rolling it out on an opt-in basis and got some build up some good reviews in the repository before launching it and you know cadence uh said hey >> uh build in public I think is the phrase people have been using for a long time >> we have all these brands this is what we're thinking of doing um that we can have speed but Yeah, things just take time to do, right? And >> so there's a bit of >> Yeah, sorry, Steve. Um, I was just going to say there is a bit of a through line here and let me just put a few bits on the screen. So, the first one was obviously that uh No, where's it gone? The one that we were just talking about. I can't find it now. You were mentioning it anyway. Um, but now we're on to we've got on to the site ground uh installing a thing which seems to be a bit of a PR uh nightmare. But then I'm going to highlight this one which is Cadence which has now become liquid web in the most extraordinary fashion. I I have yet to see a story like this in the WordPress space. This is self emulation done in real time. I I don't really understand what was going I I can only imagine the people who've made these decisions probably are not attending WordPress events or don't have a history with the WordPress. I could be wrong. I don't know. I don't really get it. Anyway, the WordPress uh brand cadence um has now been sort of like hijacked and made into a liquid web product, but it all seems to have been done in a very rushed fashion. Um there was poor communication. This article, by the way, is on the DIYdreamsite.com and I believe that the author Katy Boyin is is an employee of Liquid Web, which is is >> no longer. >> No longer. Okay. No longer. Right. So there was massive amount there were massive layoffs recently and she decided to leave on her own accord. Uh she was in charge. She was the product owner for >> Right. Right. Okay. >> This is a very thorough you can see I mean it really is a long long piece about what happened but it it does seem to be from Katie's point of view at least just one thing after another of missteps and misunderstanding the kind of community and the marketing and then finally the pricing about the fact that the pricing seems to have gone through the roof if you have multiple sites like 5 10x kind of the pricing. So, let's just link these two things together. Over here, we had Site Ground um installing a plug-in without really consulting the community or seeming to understand the impact of that. Over here, we have Liquid Web doing something which with hindsight probably didn't serve their community all that well. And then over here, we've got another one. This is um Marco Almeida calling out Yoast for inserting their own and you can really not really see it. Yoast have inserted their own filter inside the d inside the WordPress uh admin um near where you install plugins so that you can filter for Yoast based things. And on the surface it seems fairly benign, but he's then made this lovely screenshot of what will happen in like two months time if everybody suddenly gets the intuition, oh, we could also insert our own little filter. And so, you know, you've got awesome motor gravity form, jetpack, main WP, trust. This is what it would look like if everybody inserted their own filter. And again, just kind of like, is this what we want? Is this the sort of way that this that we're heading? So, there's a bit of a line going through these of uh companies obviously trying to make a difference, companies trying to be noticed, companies trying to change things up a little bit, but some of it not quite seeming to meet the desires uh of the community. And I don't really have an opinion on too much of it, but anyway, there you go. I've introduced it for your your delectation so that you can uh enjoy that. And it does seem that the Yos logo seems to vibrate. Look at that. interesting. Okay. Um any comments on that? >> Well, I was an employee of um Stellar WP and Liquid Web for quite a while actually. Uh and it was one of the first layoffs last year, you might recall, the day after I returned from Word Camp Asia. And at that point, I I mean, I couldn't really say anything. I was I received, you know, it's been over a year now, so I can say whatever I want, but um because of, you know, severances and things like that. Anyway, >> yeah, >> I had my own concerns back then because when we first started Stellar WP and we had one marketing group, I was part of that marketing group for all of, you know, that we oversaw all of the Stellar um each brand had its own marketing person that would contribute, etc. And then all of a sudden it was the split and there was this marketing group over these ones and this marketing group over these ones. And what I felt was a bit of an unhealthy competition to see who could outmarket and do better than the others instead of trying to >> really help all you know what do they say rising tide raises all boats or something like that. So instead of that kind of an address for marketing when you look now what they've done is they've taken all of the different brands. I think we had 11 brands at one point underneath the stellar WP. Stellar WP doesn't exist anymore. They've removed it from liquid web altogether and there are now four brands and several of the other brands were rolled into Cadence. So, for example, um the solid WP doesn't exist anymore. Their answer to security is part of Cadence now. And so all of those things that you used to see and be able to purchase separately. The other thing they've done is no longer have developer licenses or multi-sight licenses. So or multiple light site licenses I should say as opposed to multi-sight. The if you look at give WP for example it used to be $360 and then there was for you know for the the top of the line and I understand that prices go up and I haven't worked there in a while but they used to also have a five site developer license that you could put on five sites. They don't have that anymore. So now if you want to have five site licenses, you have to purchase $399 site licenses as opposed to a $560 or whatever it was. And and that is now the case with all of the plugins that I've seen under Liquid Web. I do believe and this is just my own interpretation that um because Liquid Web has changed funding sources and therefore some ownerships over the years that they are no longer WordPress focused that they are only looking at bottom lines and in doing so got rid of a lot of um you know give we used to bring in millions of dollars a year and I don't I don't see how that could happen anymore when give is no longer offering you agencies, multiple licenses for um you know for a a larger fee as opposed to having to purchase each one individually. And so I wonder what's going to happen. I I grieved it. I'm I'm going to be honest like I put my heart and soul into give for a long time. I wrote articles. I was out there, you know, um for lack of a better word, shilling, if you will, at at word camps and things like that and trying to demonstrate, etc. and and I no longer have give on any of my sites and I have all my sites built in Cadence and I am slowly moving them all over to build BeaverBuilder who offered me a license which was very very gracious of them and so now I'm going to be switching everything over because I can't trust Cadence because I can't trust Liquid Web any longer and I I no longer host with them either. So >> here's a here's a stat to demonstrate what you were talking about. So uh here we go. Under the new pricing structure, each site requires its own license. The previous Ultimate plan covered up to 25 sites for $299 a year. At the pro tier today, 25 sites, wait for it, $7,475 per year, but you know, you get a 15% volume discount. That's something, I suppose. Brings it down to $6,353. So, I mean, the kind of money which we're really not used to talking in the WordPress space and the kind of money which I would imagine will never ever ever ever be paid. >> Um, I could be wrong. Maybe people are just willing to open up their wallets like that, but I I have a prediction that that kind of money will never get spent on 25 websites for a a collection of plugins. That just seems like that's not going to happen. And you know, I think I think you could look at all of my public everything over the last 10 years. I have never said anything negative about a company or about a plug-in or about anything publicly. I have my own opinions, of course. This one has pushed me to the point where I felt the need to say something. If that tells you the severity of it. >> Yeah. >> I'm sorry, Steve. What were you going to say? >> Oh, I was going to say you have a Sorry if it's a a weird question, but you have a give tattoo. I do actually. I have a gift tattoo here on my arm. And >> yeah, just know you give a crap about this, right? You really >> I really do. Um I got >> three of us got the Give Tattoo in Nashville together the first year that we were in Nashville. And uh we did it because being able to work at Give changed the three of our lives in such a positive way. And I still see that. Right. So working at Give put me into the community where I am now. put me on the stage where I am today sitting, you know, here in front of all of you. Um, and so I have very very deep love for give in in my heart and that's why it it just breaks your heart in some ways. Um, I'm planning to add to this tattoo flowers and things around it. So, it isn't just give, but it's more about my whole life. Um, >> well, I won't cover it because it really does still mean something for me, but it really was sad for me. >> Yeah. So, anyway, there we go. So there was a little bit of a through line there of WordPress companies sort of seeming to gain the eye of parts of the community, let's put it that way. And uh and in some cases pretty easy to understand why that eye has been gained. Um just I because time >> not a single comment by the way not a single comment about this entire AI stuff always gets the comments and so does the community stuff but everybody's staying away from that one. Yeah, that's interesting. >> Um we'll just move on very quickly. Time is short. But we had a few articles that I wanted to flesh out a little bit, but we'll just sort of skirt over them. If you're interested in a nonWordPress site, but a site which sometimes covers WordPress stuff, uh, talking about market share and decline in that market share, this is an interesting read. It's over on the search engine journal. Um, and they're making the point that the the stats for WordPress have been in decline now for six months in a row. And the the author of this, Roger Monty, um makes the point that when you've got six six consecutive months where the same thing happens, then there's there's there's something more than a a blip. There's a bit of a of a pattern going on. So, you can read and you can see that there's data. You can see the screen. Certainly worth looking at. Um next stop, oh, I wanted to mention this one. Um, I think probably the quickest way for me to do this is just to read it into the record, but the URL for this is thewp communitycollective.com and it says, "The state of the uh state of the community survey aims to understand the current perspectives of the people in and around the WordPress open-source project community. The survey is open for responses from the 27th of May through to the 28th of June. So, full 20 days to fill it out. Take the survey below. Um and it just to summarize the state of the community survey is an open survey from the WP community collective and it's really open for anybody who works with builds on contributes to or cares about the WordPress open-source project and um and it's right there. There's like probably 10 minutes work in this I would have thought by the time that you've filled it out and given it some thought and what and they're very much keen to uh to hear your to hear your things. maybe some of the bits that we mentioned so far, you know, would crop up some of the community bits around things like cadence and what have you. >> Go and check it out. Links in the show notes as always. It'll be probably in the community section, that one. And then we're kind of running very much low on time, so I'll I'll drop this one maybe as our last one. Um if you're interested in the accessibility day coming up in October, it's a way off I know but they're u being good custodians of that project and they're now on the lookout uh for speakers. So it's the 7th of October when the actual event takes place but they're looking for some speakers and there's information here about the kind >> if you scroll down can you see the deadline? >> Yeah, where is it? There we go. Um, tomorrow. >> Wait, did I get this wrong? Sorry. Yeah, I knew it was tight, but I didn't realize it was that tight. Oh, I know why. I bookmarked this about Yeah, I bookmarked this when I was in Poland and I thought, "Oh, that's quite a while." But no, so you'd have to submit this by tomorrow. >> Tomorrow. Yep. >> 9th of J. Yeah, tomorrow. There we go. >> Unless they extend it, which I have no idea if they will or not. >> Yeah, maybe they will. Maybe they will. But anyway, go and if if that's your thing, go and check it out. Um, yeah, I think that's it. There's a couple of pieces that I did want to mention, but we're probably not going to have time for them. I'll just I'll just go through them ever so quick. This is an interesting piece by Dre. Uh, and it kind of seems to reflect what's going on with Automatic and WP Engine. It seems like a similar story unfolded on the Drupal side with a company uh in the well Drupal and WordPress space. And it's kind of interesting. Dric obviously wants people to be nice to one another and uh grow the ecosystem, not just their own products and services. And also speaking of Drupal, uh Akismmit, which is a long-standing plugin the millions of people I'm sure have got on their WordPress websites, anti-PAM plugin by automatic uh is now apparently available as a Drupal. We don't say mod uh plugin, we say module. So uh yeah, you can get that over there. And that as they say is it. That is everything I have got time for. Any final comments? >> No, a lot of good stuff today. >> Yeah, Iran said he's got a Oh, he's gone. He's just saying thanks for the fun podcast. Have a pet on me. I will. Thank you. That's great. I'll do that. But not actually on you as you point out the AI. That's easy to say. The That is actually hard to say. The AI angle. That's not easy. Should be optin. So, we're talking, we're going back to the plug-in here, aren't we? From site ground. Uh, if WP uh, sorry, WP7, enable it if you want it with experiments. If you don't want it, don't enable it. And >> can I interrupt and just say if you're not following Elliot Richmond in places where videos, you should be. He is an amazing videographer and his Tik Tok channel and his YouTube channel are so well done >> and he's very nice man as well and does a cracking pizza. I think he had to do I could be wrong Elliot but I think you had something like 70 to do last night or something, didn't you? Or some bizarre or maybe that's this coming weekend. Anyway, uh good luck with that if it hasn't already happened. And then finally the webinar. Hi beautiful people. It's been a while. I didn't get to tune into your show, Nathan, but I hope you are good. I am good. Thank you. Uh, nice to see you guys. And as we as as the webinar introduces himself, will knock it on the head and say it's time to go. Uh, so you'll have to watch it on replay. Um, if that's all right with you. So, it's only time for the sort of handwave of joy. I'm going to call it that, the handwave of joy. There we all are. So, quick thanks from me. Thanks to Michelle. Oh, look. I can't do it now that I'm on the other side and I've memorized. That's muscle memory only. I can't do it. There's Michelle. >> I am. >> There's Mark. There's Steve. Okay, I can lock that bit in. That's fine. We will be back next week. We'll publish this tomorrow uh as a podcast episode, but we'll be back next week. Join us then. But thank you, Steve. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. We'll see you next week. Take care. Bye bye. Bye., This Week in WordPress #375, YouTube, 01ktsg7a81t5jtk501vr6ern1t.