This Week in WordPress #380  🔗 **Source:** [This Week in WordPress #380](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSq1XKBWSAY) Hello. Hello, Alex. This This episode's going to be called Hello, Alex. That's the uh That's the best title. That was great. Good timing. Uh Alex has just managed to get it under the wire. I'm very appreciative, Alex. Thank you. >> Yeah. Well, when you got a talent, >> that's right. Use it. Um 380 of this week in WordPress. That means we've done 379 others in the past and goodness knows how many we'll do in the future. But we're here to drone on about WordPress until there's nothing left to say. It usually takes about 90 minutes. Uh, and in order to make that happen, I'm I'm joined by three other droners. Sorry, that's not >> it's not inaccurate. >> I apologize. Uh, I'm joined by three other fabulous people and they're going to help us chat through all of the bits and pieces that I've discovered over the last week in the WordPress space. If if we go off peace as we always do usually with AI then uh forgive us but um I'll do a few bits of >> AI. Oh, we're always droning on about AI and it's it's never good. >> I think I'm real. >> Yeah, you're real, but the conversations may not be. Uh I'll introduce the guests in just a minute, but um I'll do the normal housekeeping. So, if you um are joining us and you want to comment live, that's lovely. That kind of makes the show go forwards. The best place to send you for that is this little URL. Where's it gone? Here it is. Um, say is sporting it under her chin. Uh, it's that's Oh, what a pro. What a pro. Look at that. >> It's like you've been on a podcast before. >> You've done this before. Yeah. Yeah. >> Just I got to get the reverse thing happening. I'm like, what direction is this in? >> I know. Everybody gets it wrong first time. There's the URL. Anyway, wpbuilds.comlive. we embed the platforms video and that means that there's a little like chat widget inside the video. So if you don't want to be using YouTube comments or Google accounts or anything like that, which I'm increasingly stopping doing, uh we got a story about that later actually. Um then go to that URL and just hit the live chat button inside the player and say avoid it. I'm going to get rid of it now. Look dead weird. um go to there and you'll be able to chat without a Google account or anything like that. However, if you're on that page and you do have a Google account, you can use the YouTube comments. They should in theory come into this platform. Last week they didn't, but this week it looks like they did. So, here we go. Like this. Uh good evening from a Chile Victor Harour in Australia. It's Cameron Jones. Hi you Cameron. How you doing? Good evening indeed. >> Good afternoon, says Ree. Ree win just down the road from me from a sweltering Newton Lew Willows. Ree, I was just saying to Mark, it's actually really nice here today. It's like, I don't know, 18 degrees or something. That heat wave has gone and we're firmly in the nice weather again. We're not dealing with any of that, which is quite nice. Justin, >> hello. Hello. Hello, says Justin. >> Uh, good to be live with you. I love the show. Justin Williams Swampe. Does that mean you love the show which is called Justin Williams Swampe or does that mean that you love this show and your name is Justin Williams and you I presume have a product called Swamp Pay? I overco complicated that, didn't I? Um, and >> a false dichotomy. >> Uh, oh hey, it's a bunch of cool people on today. Oh, and Nathan is here, too. You see what I have to put up with? >> See, >> you're not wrong. The disrespect, I tell you. >> Yeah, disrespect is good. No, keep it coming. The more humiliating it is for me, the better. I have broad shoulders. Um Elliot >> and he's British, so >> and and I'm British. I could take I can take up a lip, you know. >> Yep. Yep. Stiff up a lip. Um Elliot saying hi. He's just down the the road from me. And what a mly crew. We watch your website. Nice to nice to have you with us. Uh I I saw you knew a Mly Crew song so I could sing it just like right now. >> Oh yeah, that would have been a good segue, wouldn't it? >> Of all the times for me to come up with one from like I came up with one in my head right away, but it was like one of their newer ones for some reason. Which implies I had to listen to. >> Yeah, right. New. Oh my god, I said newer, but it's from like 2007, so it's not newer at all. >> Relatively speaking, >> everybody everybody apart from say has been on this podcast before. And you see what happens. We always end up like we're never talking about WordPress. It's always about minute 20 that the first WordPressy vague WordPressy thing starts. But that's why it's >> Wait, I have I can help with that. >> Okay. >> Mly Cruz is Mly Cruz website on WordPress. >> Oh, I don't know. Is it? I don't know. Do they have one? >> I don't know. But Taylor Swift is >> I know that because the the account the >> the whatever you want to call it the official press account said that the other day >> that Taylor Swift's WordPress was on website. No >> website was on WordPress. There we go. >> I'm actually old enough I'm actually old enough to remember when Mley Cruz started >> and I might have bought one or two of their albums. Yeah, they were popular. >> You say album, Mark. >> Yeah, album. >> That should tell you something. Okay. I bought one or two of their eight tracks. All right. So, >> wait, really? >> No, I did not. >> Okay. I was like, >> I was never into eight tracks. No. No. >> How old are you, Mark? >> I'm old enough that we had an eight track player in the house and in one of our cars. But, um, >> how you brought bought a cassette? >> What's that? >> I had cassette players. Loads. Oh, I made I made so many >> mix tapes. It was ridiculous. Yeah, >> send them to your friends. >> Crew is on Squarespace. >> Squarespace. I know. I was just figuring it out, too. >> Okay. >> There we go. Never mind. They had to be on something. >> I actually I actually ran into what's his face. The lead singer for Mly Crew at a >> No, the lead singer was his name, wasn't it? Brett something. I don't remember. Anyway, >> I he was like giving away motorcycles at a casino in the middle of like the Hard Rock Casino in Oklahoma City or something like that. >> He won me >> and and uh and my daughter was with me and and I was like, "Oh my goodness, I'm like I was such a big fan of theirs back in high school." And she's like, "Oh, you you should go meet him. You should." So she she was seven years old and she literally grabbed me by the hand and walked me around the hotel until we found the guy. >> Wow. She was like and then she's like I'm going to tell him that you were a big fan of his during high school. I said just going to make him feel old. >> Vince, you know, >> right? >> Yeah. Vince Neil, that's his name. Yeah. >> Such a big fan. You thought his name was something else. >> No, I'm thinking some other 80s big hair band. Um >> big hair. You know what I realized y'all is the reason that Mly Crew doesn't have a new album is because they're on Squarespace. >> That's the only conclusion I could draw. >> It's a 404. >> And they also And they also sound They also sound terrible now, but >> Oh, yeah. >> Before they were so good. >> They really were. They really were. >> No, you can't put on You can't put on like Dr. Feelgood and not feel good listening to it, >> right? All right, I'm going to wrestle this. I'm going to wrestle and say Nathan's like, "Please, please." >> No, no, no. I love all this stuff, but I am going to wrestle fact. Uh, so who came before the dinosaurs? Says Cameron. I have an interesting history fact for you, which my son. This is so cool. This is a who came first thing. Do you know that we are So, you know the great pyramids in Cairo that like >> I've heard of them. >> I've heard of them, too. Yeah. So, and have you heard of Cleopatra? >> I've heard of her. >> She was an Egyptian ruler during the sort of Roman period. So, we are closer to Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the building of the pyramids. >> Holy crap. >> That's how Egyptians were around. Isn't that mental that those pyramids were finished >> and the span of time between that and her and her and also mysterious Isn't that weird? >> They didn't know why they were there still. Yeah. No, the aliens. You don't know how they built that, >> right? We're getting on. Uh, okay. So, let's go around the house. >> It's like, wait, wait. I can I can tie it back in again. >> Okay. >> It's like, who built the pyramids? Who has commit access? They're very >> like, >> very good. >> I'm going to go around the houses and introduce you one at a time. Uh, let's start with Mark. >> We haven't even done that yet. Oh, >> no. No, we haven't. Mark is the partnership manager for MainWP amongst other things. His hobbies include I nearly read that word wrong. photography, woodworking, car detail. Uh detailing. Is that what it's called? Is that what you call? >> That's what that's that's what Yeah. Okay. And only because I spent all day yesterday doing it. >> Doing it. Okay. So, that's your hobby now. Yeah. He likes waking up at 4 in the morning for podcasts and repairing things with duct tape and chicken wire. I appreciate it. Uh thank you. And so, that's our first guest. There's Mark. Thank you for joining us. And then, >> yay, Mark. >> Here we have Se. Seed, who's not been on the show before. And Se is the CEO and co-founder of the WP Open Community Collective, a member-based organization supporting open source contrib contributors through fellowships, governance, infrastructure, and ecosystem advocacy. She also founded and manages a web development consultancy specializing in data and content management and brings deep roots in technology civic and community engagement journalism and a small and small business and nonprofit development to her work building sustainable systems with clients and communities. Lovely. And uh the the bio that was sent to me by Alex Standerford over there goes as follows. Honestly, use what we had last time. That would be perfectly fine. For what it's worth, for what it's worth, I want you to know I jumped into this call and as as the counter was going down, I literally went into the last Google doc and I pasted my note in just in case. >> Darn. >> Anyway, there we go. Ale. Alex. Alex, tell us about yourself. Just go for it. You You do your own bio. >> Who are you, Alex? >> Oh, crap. Now I got to open the dock. Uh, no. I'm uh my name's Alex. Uh, I've beenress right. Wait, who am I? Uh, I'm a WordPress developer, uh, programmer in general. I've been in the WordPress space for a while. Um, mostly just lately been working on, uh, building, growing, and developing, uh, Siren Affiliates, which is my partnership management tool and plugin for WordPress. Um, and yeah, so I'm mostly just here to talk about WordPress, talk about everything related to that. >> Yeah. >> What's the other part? If you're mostly here to talk about WordPress, >> it's got to be Cleopatra. Look. >> Oh, it's got it's always AI. >> AI. I mean, it's it's it's it's always the AI in the room, like it or not. It always comes up. >> I love this comment, though. I think I dated Cleopatra back in the day. I think somebody's trying to trying to age themselves even more than you and me, Mark. Uh, >> that's Well, then they'll know when it then maybe they can name a song by Mley Crew. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, let's get the show, shall we? Let's begin. I told you, say 20 minutes. We're not quite as bad today. It's about 16 minutes in. We've not done too badly. Uh so this is the website that we run or that is to say that I run wpbuilds.com. We push out content like this a couple of times a week. I do a podcast episode on a Thursday and then this thing this this week in word press show we do it live and then I put it out as a podcast episode tomorrow. If you're interested in that and you want to hear more from me, two emails a week therefore will come your way. That's it. I don't know anything else. And if you put your email address into this little box that'll start happening and you can unsubscribe, you know, uh if you like. So anyway, put your put your email address in there and get to issue. Get >> over it. Get over it. Yeah, that's right. Um, this is the most recent set of episodes that we did actually. And look, it was this cheeky chap down here. Um, he's like a bad penny. >> Yeah. No, no, good penny. But the most recent episode I did was with an automatician who I met whilst I was at Word Camp Ass. She's called Tess. And um, we did a thing about AI. We really didn't talk much about WordPress, but the last couple of episodes have been about WordPress. And so I did one with Katie Keith where she talked about her kids having a real skepticism about AI. And my kids are very similar to that. So we got into that whole subject. And then Tess is really interested in where AI meets the creative landscape because that's her whole thing, creativity, publishing, all of that. And so it was a very interesting conversation. really didn't sort of stick to WordPress at all, but if you fancy listening to that, certainly go check it out. And um yeah, like I said, if you put your email in there, we will automatically send you those bits and pieces once a week. >> Bibs and bobs. >> Bibs and bobs. That's it. Right. So, here we go. Keep the comments coming. If I don't get to them, I apologize, but hopefully when these people start talking, I'll have a chance to look over them. So, so, so, so there's a few bits of community news. There's kind of like event news. there's the inevitable AI news and bits and pieces like that. So, let's start off here. This is a bit of a backpedal. Uh, last week or a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember, there was talk about phasing out uh the sort of classic block. So, it's not like you couldn't do anything with like WordPress in sort of like legacy mode, if you like, like the classic editor wasn't the thing. It was the idea of drop in the classic block. So you drop in the classic block and then you could do classic things inside the classic block. It would appear that that kind of got decided. I don't know if it was arbitrarily or what have you, but there was a load of community push back. People sort of said, "Nope, we want it still." In fact, one guy uh chimed in and said something like, you know, they've got thousands of websites with tens of thousands of different bits and pieces going on and so they need it anyway. It's staying with no commitment to get rid of it in the near future. So if that troubled you, you can uh you can rest easy. That was >> I mean there are so many websites that have updated their their you know their their version and have not updated their content. I have many of them like it would take so much effort to go back. I mean I know it wasn't going to >> it wasn't going to get rid of it so that it would like um depreciate it, right? It was just going to take it out of the the new like you couldn't add it anymore. But it's so it's so wild that like why wouldn't you just like you could just hide it, you know what I mean? You could like make it less accessible without removing it because there's so many so many clients and users who are still using it. It just seems so silly. I really like that quote that um uh uh Rey in the repository had pulled up there which was you know make it obsolete by choice I think not by force. >> Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Just let it like it's not hurting anybody. Just let it let it die out slowly. >> Well, that is basically where it's landed. I think exactly that. Now, if you're using it, you can carry on using it. And I can't actually find the bit of the article now. There was a bit where somebody had sort of chimed in in whatever space they were discussing it and and really painted a picture of this would be a real calamity for me. You know, they client websites all over the place. Duh. Where is it? Where is it? Oh, here we go. Jason Lamatio, a senior web application specialist at the University of Wisconsin Madison, runs multiple WordPress multi-sightes with hundreds of sites and thousands of classic editor blocks. >> So, you know, for people like them at a university, obviously a lot of that stuff may be something that they're their editors and their, you know, all of the people that are contributing that that that's just their workflow. So, they don't want it interrupting or messing with. So, anyway, that seems like a good call to me. Stop messing with the workflow, please. >> Well, that's >> I see enough going on. >> Yeah, my big Right. Exactly. That's kind of my big thing is like here we are with everything happening and how much WordPress is how much the web is shifting right now as a result of everything going on. And I just can't help but wonder why are we I mean I don't know why like this this is the thing that it just feels like a distraction almost. Yeah. I I haven't thought about the class. I'm I'm a big Gutenberg propon big proponent of the Gutenber. I have been for a long time, don't get me wrong, but like I haven't even noticed that it exists. I've completely forgotten that that that specific block exists. And if it's that invisible to me already, I just feel like >> yeah, >> it's solved already. Why why bother? >> We like to invent problems here. >> Yeah. Well, um, we're gonna move it on a little bit, unless Mark's got anything to >> problem. >> Do you have anything else? >> No. No. I I agree with what Alex just said. I don't understand why someone got a bug up their butt to suddenly, you know, remove it, but whatever. >> I've never heard that phrase. I'm going to start using that all the time. >> There you go. >> You're welcome. >> Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, that's great. Um, >> I love it, American. In fact, I'm writing that down. That is the episode title. Uh, >> there you go. >> Right. Okay. With two T's, right? But, um, >> there's another phrase, but >> maybe I'll miss it. >> It's your show, man. Yeah, I can I can do what I like. Um, the the repository features pretty heavily this week actually. Uh, say obviously, sorry, not say. Um, Ray, easy to model. Yeah, you do rhyme. uh obviously usually features heavily on this show, but >> this is a particularly heavy. I think we've got three or four pieces which she wrote about. She's such a fantastic curator. >> Oh, she does so good. And honestly, it >> the amount of work which goes into a lot of those posts, you sort of read them, but then you sometimes if you read them for a second time and you kind of figure what like how how many things did you have to read just to collect and coless that one sentence? We're very lucky to have that, >> right? Yeah. It's not just gathering, she's curating. She's It's so She's so >> But you know what's amazing? You know what's amazing about her is that you can like ping her in Slack and she responds. Like it's like how does she have time to write these 14page articles that are really detailed and really smart and you learn a ton >> and still be able to interact with people? I don't know how she does. >> I bet she welcomes the procrastination. You're like, "Oh, thank goodness." >> Maybe. Maybe. But, you know, she reads all like the court listener articles for the the whole WP Engine Auto and that must be like walking through molasses. >> Yeah. >> Um, she does the hard work for us. >> Yeah. Exactly. Right. >> I don't want to read those. >> Um, this time though talking about something which released so it's a film like it's a documentary which is >> Wait, wait, wait. I really want to make this segue. We can segue right into the code for the people by saying we've got speaking of bugs in our butts. >> Okay. Okay. There is the segue. >> I I actually thought this I actually thought the same thing say so I'm glad you said it. >> So So I haven't seen it yet. I'll give you I'll be honest. >> I think it's what is it 19 minutes long and Taco and I had a little twoing and throwing about it. Uh, and I I just literally haven't had a chance to watch it. But I know that I mean literally I went like clicked on to minute six and minute eight and you know just to see and I know that um I know that an McCarthy is in it. I know that Matias is in it. Um Mary Hob is in it. Matt Mullenberg is in it. There's maybe some more people more. Is there more than that? But um Oh yeah, >> there's a couple other folks in there. Yeah. >> Right. Okay. But I but I haven't seen it yet. But it it's kind of like championing the idea of open source and this sort of thing that you see in the wider sort of landscape, you know, not connected with WordPress people champion championing open source and one of those things like you won't miss it until it's gone and when it's finally gone and the the the giant corporate entities have taken over the internet. It's only at that point that you will realize what was the folly of letting all of that go. Um, apparently the project, if you scroll right to the bottom of this piece, apparently it was it began like the production of it began like three years ago or something. So, it's been in going for a long long time. And in the article somewhere, I don't know who it was, but somebody maybe it was Matt said that a few of the bits are now in it like, you know, they're not quite as up to date. So I think Matt was complaining about AI being closed source and since then some some of the AI models have become become open source and what have you. But uh not having seen it I can't really comment on it but I don't know if you any of you three saw it or had any thoughts if you did >> I'm going to need I'm going to need to like sit down like I'm going to need to like make that a thing like if I'm going to watch that I need like maybe a tranquilizer or two. >> Okay. I think I thought you were going to be watch party. >> Yeah, >> we should have a watch party so that I can like >> get it all out while it's happening. >> I think in a safe space. >> We could totally We could have a watch party and totally MSP3K it, which would be kind of >> That would be so fun. That would be >> We could do that with water cooler. I think that would be >> long either. No, the whole thing the whole thing would be over in less time than it took us to get in the introduction for this podcast. >> I mean, it might get us all banned from WordPress, but I don't think any of us are trying, you know. >> Yeah. >> Oh, wait. Say, has that happened to you? Do you know anyone? >> Yeah, it's it's you can't have it twice. Uh, that's great. >> Oh, you can. Oh, you can. >> No, no, no. I mean, it's called being >> um >> Yeah, >> it's pointing to this website, by the way. So, uh, it's called code forthepeople.com and, uh, it's on YouTube, you know, and it's it's here it is. Go. >> Is it being distributed anywhere else other than YouTube? Do we know? >> I don't know. I was >> they did it. So, okay, there's a bit of context. It was released obviously the the person that made it, the director that made it is obviously, you know, proud of their work and all of that kind of stuff. And they got a >> I don't know if it was done in the automatic offices. I know they have an automatic office in New York and it was done in New York. So I wondered if it was maybe the same place but um it kind of got like an official announcement and I think a few of the of the journalists outside of the WordPress space I think a few of those sort of people were invited and there was a few sort of celebrities and things like that that came. So >> the premiere was at the automatic space >> was it? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, there was that, but beyond, you know, whether it's appearing in, you know, as like a preamble to, I don't know, films in theaters and things, I genuinely don't know. >> Um, I guess >> Neil Dash was at the was at the premiere. >> Okay, there you go. Sort of that caliber >> on the on the panel, which I thought was really interesting. I don't, you know, I'm trying not to be um judge it uh ahead of time because I obviously, well, maybe not obviously, but I care deeply about the open web and you know, open source in general. So, it's it's so funny with all of the various issues that we've had. It's like we're aligned and then except not. You know what I mean? So, I don't I'm I want this to be >> like what it could be. I worry that it is a bid to, you know, has has shifted or morphed, let's say, into something that is more of a propaganda piece. But >> yeah, I suppose maybe that's why Ry put that bit in at the at the very end about the fact that it it had been in the making since before all of that stuff had started. And the bit that you just said there, um, say it's totally all right, isn't it? You know, in the same sense that you and I can agree that we ought to have democracy, but we don't have to agree on every single bit of the dem the democratic process. You might be on the left, I might be on the right, I might be in the middle, you might be on the right. Like we can all agree that open source is a thing and then totally vehemently disagree about the bits and pieces in, you know, a smaller community like WordPress, you know. So I think >> well that's what democracy is, right? I mean that's that's the definition. So >> yeah, it only becomes a problem when the power imbalance skews that because ah not a democracy. So that's the real problem, right? Like >> we we're all expecting the democracy. We're all making analogies about a democracy yet that's not what we're actually working within in our WordPress world. It's not actually democracy as has as has been noted many times by project leadership. So that means that if you do disagree, you are, you know, subject to punishment. >> However, >> consequences. Consequences. >> Consequences. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. >> Consequences. >> It's It's early there. >> For me, though, the big >> the big thing for me though is regardless of what it is, the open web is still really important. It's been It's constantly under pressure to be closed up more and more. uh by people with a lot of resources and a lot of things. And regardless of my opinion of uh the dynamics behind WordPress and things like that, um somebody who's even remotely in my corner to try to help and make sure that the web does stay as open as possible. Um I'm going to take that until the very fact that that is not the case. >> Um so I'm kind of just taking what I can get when I can get it. You know what I mean? >> I support that. I um I I think it Okay, so if if all something like that does is alert people of my kids generation that there is such a thing as open source, that's a bit of a win. >> I I think that when you and I started on the web, I'm going to sweep us all up in that. But um like that was a real thing. Like there was just loads of openness like all the open https didn't exist yet, >> right? it defaulted to and then now we've kind of collapsed into convenience uh you know everything's convenient and done for us but entirely closed. I think my kids don't have even a clue that at some point they might need to own their data. At some point they might make they might regret having for 20 years put all of their stuff into this silos assuming it would be there forever and ever. Amen. and then it just goes away because I don't know some stock market crashes or something. >> Those people those young kids have not don't know what it feels like to lose your MySpace account. >> Right. They don't know that. >> That's true. >> And I'll have you know >> they probably haven't had their Facebooks hacked and lost all the pictures from their trip to Africa in 2008. >> Right. Right. Right. You know, >> and I I back up everything. >> Those are those are oddly specific examples. >> Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. >> Oh, Mark's lights always go out. Look, I got I got to go dance. this ghostly mark for a few moments when he goes and waves his hand at the light sensor and then comes back. It's brilliant. Uh, we got a few comments. So, let's talk about that. Uh, firstly, Cameron is saying, "Didn't somebody do a talk about this at WLDDN recently?" Cameron did a talk at WPLDN recently and so I apologize Cameron. I wasn't there. Uh, I've missed that one. So, I apologize. >> You missed London? >> I I So, I normally go I've been like for more or less every single one and I I didn't make it to that one. It's just ironic >> because it was hot >> of all of all the ones to miss. It's just >> Well, we had to cancel the most recent one because of how hot it was. The transport network it was the public transport networks were basically reporting that a lot of stuff wouldn't work. And it it turned out to be the right decision. A lot of people could have made it in, but a lot of people wouldn't have got home, >> which would have been a bit of a nightmare anyway. >> Or a party. Yeah. >> Oh, darn. I'm stuck with my WordPress friends for an extra day. Uh Andrew Palmer is joining us and he says according to WP umbrella. So this is back to the classic editor I guess. Uh examination of sites 23% still use the classic editor. So the classic editor I'm guessing as opposed to the classic block which is similar but not quite the same. I'm guessing this is Kyle. Hello Kyle. Um good morning from a humid Richmond uh Virginia. Wouldn't it be great if your town was actually called humid Virginia? I think that would be I think that would be >> there's a town in Michigan called Hell. >> Oh, is there's a town in uh in I think it's Somerset uh here called Chip Shop, which I think >> Oh, Patricia's on. >> Oh, I hope Yeah, Patricia, I forgot to say hello. She's up there somewhere. There's Phillip as well has joined us. Thank you. Um, and Andrew says, I guess talking about the video, the code for the people video says, basically it's all automaticians, which is a misstep for sure. I'm curious, for what it's worth, like people outside of WordPress won't even know that or we care because >> it's the open web and you make sure that everyone's involved and then they're like, here's our closed network. >> Sure. But we're literally introducing to a lot like that video. Oh, I I imagine like think of the broader audience, they don't even know about the concept of what an open web even is. Like they probably >> and they don't know about the politics. I mean, this is definitely us us shooting the messenger when the message >> actually if they don't know about the politics, they don't know about the dimensions and that part is none of that is disclosed. Then they're like, "Oh, Matt Mullenwick is such a cool dude. Look, he's saving the open web. Oh, look, he must not do anything problematic whatsoever." Yeah, I get that. I get that. >> Um, >> it's all right. It's fine. I don't care. >> Jimmy, >> I'm over it. >> He's like, >> "Yeah, >> hello, Jimmy." >> Totally over it. >> Who else have we got? All of Arizona has towns called named hot. >> Really? Is that a thing? Uh, Nomad Skateboarding says, "Back to the video. Uh, my only real critique of code for the poetry is the emphasis on open source AI when a when a automatic has been pushing open AI etc. >> Open AI as opposed to open source AI. >> Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So like the message for a long time has been just get the AI or at least it felt like get the AI wherever you can find it and bind it into WordPress and now maybe we've reached a a moment where we're sort of rethinking that as well. Um, >> I know Alex is a big proponent of AI, so maybe maybe you're not bothered about that, not not to be open source. >> Well, I just think that you got to use whatever is available to you at the time. >> Yeah. And open source is a little behind. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, it's it'll catch up eventually. I mean there's a reason I think that the way that they built the AI integration into WordPress is really wise because we will be able to now start setting up generic models that are open source that are controlled but we got to use what's accessible to most of the people right now which isn't necessarily a custom AI model. Um hosting companies and stuff like that I'm sure are are all eating that stuff up you know I mean they're trying to figure out ways to run local model run these open source models on their hosting platforms. It won't be long before I I half expect that in not too not too distant of a future there's going to be a world where WordPress hosting literally just includes an AI model and you just you're you know what I mean and it's a light enough model that it can do most of the stuff that you need it to do and then if you need something higherend you're paying for per token. >> I mean it's it's coming. It's just not there yet. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um so let's pivot a little bit. We're still on on the repository actually but not Ry. What the heck? Um this is this is Matt Cromwell. Um Matt's been on this show and podcast that I do and things like lovely lovely person. So he's um he's been allowed >> um what's he put? I can't remember what she calls it when she allows somebody else to write >> guest opinion. Something like that. >> Yeah, something like that. Can't remember. But anyway, >> a very similar talk to this at press conf. This is kind of the um the topic of his >> Right. Okay. Well, it's certainly in his wheelhouse. So, he's got his um what's it called? Root and roots. Yeah. >> Roots and Oh, I'm so sorry, Matt. It's gone out. >> Roots and fruits. >> There you go. Roots and fruits. >> Um sort of which is a bit like a consult a consultancy service trying to help WordPress businesses sort of weather the storm. And coincidentally, by the way, Oh, did you did you? >> Yeah, I was one of his I was one of the original ones. It was awesome. Um, highly recommend it. All right. Well, >> I mean, Matt Cromwell has a has a lot of WordPress experience, but specifically like like you said, this is in his wheelhouse. He has been literally >> not just his own plugin, but you know, at Liquid Web, like his own plugin with WP, but at Liquid Web, you know, they managed a lot of >> different plugins, but also he's just been paying attention for a long time, you know, and talking to people. So he's bringing his own experience but also sort of the I guess the lived experience of the WordPress uh tale the tale of word the WordPress history you know he's really been around and really been >> um paying attention. So I think he's definitely >> Yeah, >> he's the right person to listen to. >> Yeah, we talk about this topic a lot. What? >> Yeah. Well, it's it's the topic of our time, isn't it really? Like so this is on the repository but Matt wrote it. It's called our declining plug-in sales. The canary in WordPress is coal mines. I hope we all understand what that means. And you know, paint AI into the mix and all of that and and market share declining and things like that. Basically, does everybody need to worry? And I don't think Matt's whole argument is no, nobody everybody can just stop worrying, everything's going to be fine. That's really not what he's saying. Uh it's more that just stop, have a look at your business, and think about it. and and it kind of felt like the thrust of his argument is if you have like a let's say you've got a plug-in business and your plug-in bu business does this tiny thing like let's say oh I don't know it connects >> um >> it adds a date to your footer >> yeah like something like that some teeny tiny little thing then yes you are probably going to have to have a bit of a rethink whereas if you've got something which is a little bit more encompassing all surrounding like I don't know an LL LLM plugin or a form plugin or where there's real value. People can't just sort of swap it out with a bit of Vibe coding in a heartbeat. >> Yeah. >> Building what you've built and provided for them is is really essential to their business. Essentially, I think that's what he's saying you need to be doing. And um and >> sorry, I'll just finish off quickly. That then sort of leans into a few of the bits and pieces we'll discover later. Not everybody, I think, will agree with Matt because they've sort of voted with their plug-in business and shut it down, but we'll come back to that a little bit later. So, uh, Alex, I think you were chiming in. >> Yeah, sorry, I kept trying to out there. Um, this is something that's particularly close to me because I launched Siren, you know, right as AI was coming in. Uh, it came into full swing as I was, uh, launching the free version on the.org repository, which, you know, literally just came out last month. So, like all of this is relevant to me. Um, and the biggest thing that I've noticed in my own usage it uh that I'm attributing for the plug-in sales is AI just because it's uh tearing down a lot of those walls like what you're talking about with simpler uh simpler plugins can just be put together with an agent. Uh and then also I find in my own personal workflows I'm choosing WordPress more for more specific things. Like before I whenever I was actually writing the code myself um I was uh I leaned pretty heavily on WordPress because it already had a lot of stuff in place that just kind of gave me shortcuts um to be able to produce and develop things faster. That isn't really the case anymore with, you know what I mean? Because AI kind of allows me to do that. So now the question becomes does it actually make sense to belong on WordPress? So because of that I find my relationship in working with WordPress a lot more fluid than it used to be and I think that the walled garden of WordPress being this one single thing where you're in WordPress or you're not working in WordPress is gone and we're just trying to understand what that means. So that's that's kind of my my the biggest thing that I wanted to say related to this is like all of the consequences of that is a lot of the products that we see where it's like >> solution specifically for WordPress >> um in some cases are going to probably be feeling the effects of that. So right for example with Siren one of the big things that I ended up doing and I had been doing I've been working on since the beginning I always wanted to do it but I really aggressively did it faster is I started working on creating a SAS version right a self-hosted a hosted version that isn't on WordPress by design. Now the WordPress version still exists in the same way but the non-WordPress version can now run on its own server so that it can connect to other things and it's just generally trying to be built to be a little more AI friendly. Um, so like that's just kind of my example of what I mean on like I think to put some application to what Matt's talking about in in there. It's like I looked at my business. I thought about it. I saw where AI is impacting things. I saw how it's impacting WordPress and I didn't say no to WordPress. I still think WordPress is an excellent distribution channel. I just don't think it can be my whole business anymore. >> Thank you, Alex. That was brilliant. That was really interesting. The um I'm going to summarize with Matt's own summary. He's basically saying that if you are in the WordPress business and you know everything is not going gang busters, here's his sort of four top tips I guess to uh to sort of write the ship uh or what he would do if you want to survive and thrive. Number one, own more of your own customer and get closer to their revenue. Number two, focus your marketing efforts on discoverability. Uh number three, double down on what isn't a commodity. Um and fix your pricing. And obviously it goes without saying if you are able to see the screen there's more information about that but the blog post is on the repository and it's called our declining plug-in sales the canary in WordPress's coal mine. So as always every link that we mentioned today will get put into that show notes thing tomorrow. So if you want a quick and easy well just go to the repository uh email and you'll be able to click on that link there. Anybody else? Before we press on, >> I wanted to say one thing about this is that I've um, you know, obviously I've I've been using WordPress for a long time. I know about, you know, all the various plugins. I've also, you know, used to build my own things back before all the plugins were a thing. Um, and I've been experimenting with AI and, you know, WordPress sites. And I was asking it for like solutions and it's like, hold on, let me build you, you know, this whole thing. Let's get into your command line. And it's like taking it to this level. And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you just tell me to install a plugin?" Like, why? This was like literally like building its own stuff, which I know there were, you know, plugins for. So, it's >> the the what I've encountered is that it makes things, sure, you're vibe coding stuff and you're popping things in there, but it makes things way more complicated for a >> Okay. user as opposed like they're like now they're like you know building code and doing all this stuff which seems a lot which is and seems to them I'm sure a lot more intimidating than just saying hey go get go download this plugin and then fill out some fields you know like so almost it seems to me that almost that that AI especially people are asking AI questions about WordPress the answers that they're going to get are not the easier answers they are the like you know the legacy of WordPress on the web right so there's all the questions about you know security that's existed for you know two decades or whatever there's you know everyone's always putting all their problems with WordPress on the internet and there's you know a million stack exchanges about how to solve things with code that are plugins so I feel like the AI is really skewed towards being a developer and not being a user and I think that is complicated for general users who are trying to use WordPress might be turned off by that because the easy part of plugins is not really discussed. It didn't really talk about it unless you're asking tell me about some plugins. >> So >> you just ask it to solve a problem, it's going to just solve it with code as opposed to solving it with a plugin. So >> right, unless the problem is I want to have a blog, right? because in that case it'll say oh just use WordPress that and like >> well yeah who's saying >> that's kind of the side effect of it though >> I I have a I have a query about that then so that's kind of an interesting insight that I've never had before so let's say in let's imagine a future in which so let me rewind start again the the reason I think WordPress one of the reasons how many times can I start this by the way uh the one of the reasons WordPress is popular show >> yeah that's right that's right Yeah. Yeah. AI. How many times did Nathan start this sentence? The one of the reasons WordPress is popular is because this we had this plug-in architecture where anybody who was inexperienced could go and Google I need the answer. I need a solution for that tiny thing and and I've got the confidence to install that because I know that it's this tiny thing and it's not going to really disrupt too much of my website. Now, if we if we map into the future that all of those things go out of existence, these utility plugins disappear, then we're kind of we're kind of making it incumbent upon everybody to if it's simple, use AI for it. If it's not simple, buy it like an LMS or whatever Matt's proposing. But that's a funny ground because if we if we obliterate that bit where you can just go and find the pre-built solution by somebody and they've all gone out of business, I'm doing air quotes, then out a part of the community which I think is the very reason it it took off so well. >> I agree. >> Yeah. Interesting. Okay. >> Yeah. I just I don't know. I just wonder I mean I think a lot about tooling that could exist to better direct AI is probably going to be something that replaces a lot of something that comes to mind for me a lot is like Ali they just released a really cool um set of AI tooling. >> Oh that is cool. >> You know I I have something in Siren that allows you to be able to have a conversation with the AI agent on WordPress to figure out what kind of affiliate program you want to run. Right. So, it's a user interface problem at the minute because we don't have tools which make it drop dead. Okay. >> There's entire swads of UI and UX that just disappears because the chat box can replace it. >> And we're just still figuring out what that is. >> There's a few comments to do with somebody called Alex. And I don't I can't see an Alex in the comments. So, who's who's Alex? That maybe that'll be what this episode is called. Uh oh, you Alex. I was looking in the comments and it must be an Alex in the comments. >> Of course, it's you. Of course, it's you. Um, so here we go. So a comment then directed at you, Alex. Gosh, that's so silly of me. Respectfully disagree, Alex. I don't know what he was disagreeing about. It's probably about five minutes ago this dropped in. We don't have to use the closed big tech tools. That's how we got here in the first place. I can't think what you said that >> Alex was saying, use what you got. >> Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Um, and great perspective, Alex says. Yeah. >> So, commentary lovely bit of backs slapping there. That's very nice indeed. Okay. So, with all of that said, um, so Matt is cautioning, you know, have a look at everything. Retool your business. Start to think the landscape is changing. If you don't move with the way the landscape is changing, you probably are going to be in trouble. Uh, here's somebody calling it a day. Uh, this is DLX plugins. Uh, sorry DLX plugins. I don't I've not used any of your plugins. speak to any of that but uh they have a blog post entitled moving forwards the closure of DLX plugins and why I'm open sourcing the code. So I'll just read a little bit at the beginning for context. Effective October the 1st 2026 DLX plugins will close its shop ending its commercial operations. As this chapter ends I'm taking steps to ensure that users are fully supported and the software can live on. So, first of all, I should encourage users of their plugins to scroll down because they go into all of the things that they're doing to make sure that they're what a good custodian of these projects. Basically, making sure that they're open source as opposed to just going, "Well, that's the end of that closeup shop. I'm going to open something else." So, >> um, >> one of one of their tools is called Hey To-Dos, which is a to-doist integration with Gravity Forms. And I'm a huge fan of both of those tools. So, um, I'm kind of excited that it's being open source, but this is kind of an example of like of what I was talking about. If you look at some of his some of his tools, moderate and clean up comments directly on the front end, um, creating a specific styled block quote, right? These are very very hyperspecific solutions, >> right, >> to a problem that if you're working with an AI agent to build your theme or something on WordPress even, it would just do it. It's such a change in landscape, isn't it? Because that genuinely was the work of a developer. Yeah. >> And now it's the work of a sentence >> spoken into into a microphone. >> I want my block quote to look exactly like this. >> Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Uh so I'll just The sort of sad story goes a bit like this. Um WordPress plug-in building WordPress plugins has been the joy of my life. I hope that I continue to do it in some form. The ecosystem around plugins like mine has shifted considerably over the over the years. Many extensions have seen declines in their install bases and sales. And this is the bit as an indie developer running a standalone plug-in shop is very expensive to maintain. And I've been operating in the red now for some time. Uh to better align my resources, I've made strategic decision to close DLX plugins entirely whilst focusing on full-time employment consulting and enterprise WordPress engineering solutions. So this is the exact person I think that Matt in this article was saying was in danger. Mhm. >> Uh, maps sort of pretty perfectly to that. So, uh, Ronald is the author of this. Ronald, I don't know how to say that. Herka. Sorry, Ronald. Um, it like you don't need this coming out of my mouth, but here it comes anyway. I hope it goes well. I hope whatever the pivot is is going to work for you. So, um, but it's sad, but I suspect we're going to get a lot more of this. Um, >> and and for those who do have to go through this, and I've been through it myself, and I think he's handling it exactly the right way. >> Nice. >> By by I I I can tell you from our experience, we were very transparent when we shut down Server Press. We offered support for everybody uh that had licenses uh even a year later. If they had just bought it yesterday, we offered support all the way through the end of their term or we offered refunds if they wanted them. Um and that's you know he's doing everything that he can within his power and he's being very transparent and I can tell you that when we shut down uh the community was largely we didn't have any complaints actually so it was like unanimously uh supportive and uh and I feel like he's handling it exactly the right way and I think people will be supportive but it is going to get frustrating for the community because I do think that more and more of this type of thing is going to happen. Oh, there's another thing that I never even thought about, Mark. Like, how does that impact all of us? Like, how angry as a collective community do we start to become when Oh, that's gone now, has it? Oh, that's gone. >> Yeah. So, going back to the going back to the previous article, which I'm not sure that Matt really answered the question of if it's the canary in the coal mine. >> Okay. Um, but but his his points are valid, but I think it's it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think it's the canary in the in the coal mine, but once it starts happening more and more and more, I do think that the faith and and um belief that people have in WordPress is going to wayne just because they're going to get tired of the plug-in that they had before going away. Oh yeah, that'll that'll really annoy people. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But I also think that um on the topic of what what Se was talking about about a lack of recommend like it didn't recommend a plugin or anything like that. That is a discoverability problem. That's a discovery problem like like she was saying. So um right now we have a search engine that is searching the open plugins on WordPress.org. What we don't have is a way for an AI agent to query that using like an MCP server or something more modern or and there eventually hopefully sometime in not too distant future will have a more open webfriendly way to connect dynamically to websites to be able to get information from them agentically but those things are still early and I'm just hoping that as we figure out that transition that stuff survives I guess do you know what I mean? So >> yeah yeah yeah >> because there is a scenario where what say is talking about where it does say oh hey yeah you can do we can build this code but if you're I know you're not a developer because I have history on you because we've had several conversations in the past and I know that you've used WordPress. I'm going to go ahead and look and see if there's any WordPress solutions to see if we can just stack on top of your current stack. Right. Right. Um and I will say that it's crazy. >> Yeah. But I I'm wondering, but I think that it would eventually like it it cuz as you're working with an agent, I don't know how long you've worked with it, so I could be wrong and I apologize if I'm I'm making assumptions here, but like >> since it started I mean I'm I was okay since the beginning. >> I I I'm sorry. What I mean is like I guess in my case, my experience with it has been it learns my history. It has some context on previous conversations with that memory and it is making recommendations that are tailored to me. But the question >> that's why it told me to code it because I don't ask it for plugins or like you know I do ask for code. I do do coding with it. So maybe it's like well here's some more code. >> Yeah. Which is still kind of problematic >> but um it's like we've create anyway that's a whole tangent but I don't know. Um, I think that plug-in discoverability is an important aspect of all this though is what I'm >> I mean I think plug-in discoverability has been a ongoing problem right now. Now there's just you know another layer in between that person and the plugins that you know there were already layers of you know the repo itself and you know what's featured versus you know even that search in the repo has been >> less than ideal for a very long time right like so you're going to get things that people have pulled up because they wrote that in their content versus you know or it's only in the title like it's it's not been easy >> your plugin doesn't show up in a search result because you have good documentation and therefore you don't get support tickets that are open and support tickets are a factor to in in search right number of support tickets is a factor in search so like siren which I just added has zero support tickets because everybody just goes to siren.com and opens up the chat bubble there to talk to me instead which I'm fine with it's a good experience for them but it does >> penalize me indirectly >> from a search perspective >> so you need to just tell your AI to log every single one of those as in like you know an FAQ post. Here's the problem. Here was the solution and yeah >> every single one of its conversations is being published onto the web then you're creating that trail. >> I have got you. >> I'm still I'm still Thank you. I'm thinking about solutions to that problem but uh yeah that is but it's it's just kind of I don't know. It's kind of crazy but >> um I know sorry. >> Let's move on. Sorry. >> Yeah. No, it's okay. It's okay. Um Jimmy's comment. Jimmy. Is that Jimmy? That's Jimmy. Jimmy. Um the DLX plugins decision reminds him a bit that uh core framework has been doing not so long ago. Let's hope not everyone take the same decision. He says it would be sad for the and it's truncated WP community and world. Uh although >> I'm confused >> by by that comment. >> Yeah because uh DLX plugins closed, right? Did the core framework are we talking about the core framework of WordPress or are we talking about is core framework if you've got more help help say out say what >> help me out because I was like the core framework hasn't closed if we're talking about you know core WordPress >> and then here we go I think many people are also creating their own plugins that are hyperfocused on just what they need yet that I think is what we've sort of come to here as well this is the result of vi uh this is the result of vibe coding plugins. Maybe that's set to uh continue. And then we're back with Jimmy. And to be honest, doing it this way by being so open deserves a lot of respect. We're talking about DLX, the way it's closing there, I'm guessing. >> And then final comment at the moment is Andrew again, Andrew Palmer. Um, Elegant Marketplace, which you Andrew I know used to be the owner of, but are no longer is also closing down in September as well. In motion, just do not think it's worth >> having a plug-in store. Interesting. >> I think In fact, I did not remember that InMotion owned Elegant. >> Not Inotion. Oh, okay. >> Do not remember that at all. >> So, >> and this actually, didn't we have Last time I was on the show, we talked about whether or not web hosting companies should own plugins. And here's an example. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Core Framework. Oh, okay. Core Framework, the company has made it open source now for almost the same. >> Got it. Got it. Got it. >> Right. Okay. >> I can't believe we're still on the repository. I don't think Have we done apart from the DLX one, we haven't done anything outside of the repository. Like I said, >> back to the repository fan show. >> Yeah, that's it. She's so good. Um, by the way, $15 a month and you get access to the repository. >> I would like to point out that this is what most of the major news media in um in America at least does also. They're like, "What did the headlines say all day?" We're going to read those to you. >> She just sums it up beautifully, right? It's great. Um, and hopefully we send a bit of traffic her way as well. So, that's good. Um, inside, so this one, new one, this is a community thing. Inside Word Camp US 2026, lead lead organizers on hitting reset, adding a new beginner track, and beating the Phoenix Heat. So, there's a sort of like compounding effect here of things going on. So there's the whole landscape of politics in the US which may not people not want to get on a plane. There's the the whole WP Engine automatic thing which may made people not want to go to Phoenix. There's the heat and there's the fact that in the past the the word camps in the US have been in decline. There's some sto I think it was in this piece where I think in the US there were four word camps in 2025 or 2024 and then in the in the most recent year there's been only two I think. Ticket sales for the previous versions of uh Word Camp US was sort of in the region of 2000 and then it dropped and now it's in the region of I think something like 600 people. 264 tickets have been sold for Word Camp US so far. >> Not a lot of tickets. >> No. And we're very very close. We're sort of basically a month away. Oh, and the fact that it's it's a really interesting collection of days. It's Sunday through Wednesday >> and I believe with like public school holidays or something like that in the US. So anyway, all of this means that the organizers are um hoping to come up with ways to salvage the situation and make the event as good as it can be. Um and so one of the ideas that they've got, which I think is really interesting, is there's a nearby university, uh I guess I'm going to say it's the University of Phoenix. Forgive me. University of whatever it actually is. Um >> okay, it's the University of Arizona. Thank you. That was going to be my second choice. I went with Phoenix. >> University of Phoenix is an online only university. >> Well, that would fit. That would be great. Um, and so what they're going to try and do is try and encourage some of the people from that university to show up. I don't know if the tickets are going to be like heavily subsidized or free or what have you, but it would just be nice to have, do you know what? It'd be just nice to have some young people uh in the room and not old commodly folk like me. >> Uh, I just checked the ticket thing. So, just so we have a little bit of updated reporting, there are uh 292 tickets have been sold. >> Okay. >> As of now, and um 110 have been claimed with no sale. So, I'm assuming those are those are probably some student giveaway tickets would be my guess because that's not an they just released the um >> the uh speakers. So, I don't think 110 of them have already like claimed it or maybe that's volunteers. Who knows? But they've sold 292, >> right? with a total ticket tickets out of uh 402. >> Okay. So what's kind of interesting and we might come to an article which says this in a minute but certainly I saw it somewhere recently is that if you were to take the entire planet and events attendance is although this is the words as they come out my mouth seem like they can't be true. Apparently attendance is up, but it feels like certainly in the US it's dropped off a cliff. Word camp was just great. It was full up, you know. It was like the room, that whole big event space just felt busy, busy, busy. It was really great. Word Camp Asia, the same thing. I I would imagine a lot of the growth if you were to literally put pins in the map as as to where the growth is it would be India and that neck of the woods you know I mean the numbers there I think are just and you know obviously the the organizers know this kind of thing because we've now got a flagship event >> called word camp India starting next year so I don't know what the I don't know what the the collective set of problems are which conspire to make this event a difficult thing to manage. It'll be interesting to see if if it continues on that level. Whether or not it carries on, I don't know. There are >> I mean, I could make a whole list if you want, but you could just go ahead with like we don't know what the problem is. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, but I mean, you can you can anecdotally identify like a million things which you you know which you think other thing whether or not we could ever get to what the actual thing is. >> Every year working >> I don't think there's ever a thing. >> No. Okay. Okay. Every year, Word Camp US is literally on the first week of school. >> Public school. >> Oh, really? >> Well, also because the school year keeps moving up for so much of of the US. They've been doing a lot of playing around with the school year and so it it used to start, you know, after Labor Day, which is the beginning of September. Now, um my nephews are going back to school the second week of August, which is, you know, when this is happening. Yeah. >> Um, which is, you know, that's a problem because especially as we know we're all aging, right? And there aren't as many young kids. Turns out we have kids. >> Yeah. Speakactly. Speak for yourself. Say >> I'm not aging. How >> you have kids? I have I'm not aging. I almost 20 years now. >> I was like, Nathan, you've got a kid who's literally in a band publishing YouTube videos. >> No, no, no. I made all that up called Mly Crew. But um but so >> that's been the biggest Sorry, go ahead. >> No, I'll just segue into some comments here. So uh Cameron Cameron Jones uh who is considerably younger than me, by the way. Uh he says he's been in the WordPress space for 12 years. He's still the youngest person at every event that I attend. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um a big Oh, and I forgot to mention, yeah, part of the part of that article that um that Ry wrote wasn't just about the the free bit for the students at the University of Phoenix. Um, but it was also a um beginners track, which I love. I think that's such an interesting idea. Whether it'll attract people to actually come through the door, who knows? Let's wait and see. But a beginner's track. So you the idea being that you can go and you walk out at the end, I think, with a website. So maybe there's enough people in the Phoenix community that need that kind of help. I don't know. Let's wait and see. I just think that the younger community is going to have to have a real pain to make them want to come to WordPress. >> Until that happens, they just won't care. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. So, >> we have real pain. You know what I mean? >> Free pizzas. That's >> Yeah, that is not pain. That's incentive, which I'm big on, but that's a different thing. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A lot of growth in Africa, too, I believe. Thank you. That's great. Yeah, you're quite right, Cameron. Uh, so I always mention India just because that always seems to get the attention, but I think you're right. You know, this is also I think it's a result of, you know, the places that it's growing are places that people are not being served sort of the preackaged, you know, they don't necessarily have the same access to AI. They don't have, you know, all of the sort of prepackaged things coming to them. So, I think a lot of it has to do with sort of like they're wanting to these these different areas are really wanting to do their own thing. It's sort of like I don't want to say it's like you know 10 years behind in terms of anything other than corporate servicing right like corporate servicing has been very focused on the US and putting things into packages and there's that you know everything's pre-made preserved here in the US and probably more so also in Europe and I think that we are not like our our our people even our our clients the students they're looking for the preack package. Just give me the thing versus let me build my own. We've sort of like >> I think it might have something to do too with sort of like you know the tech bro idea that that's like a whole other thing. The idea that you can see yourself in the web which we used to be able to do that you could be a part of something. I feel like that's really changed because it feels very much like the sort of tech bro techracy tech oligarchy has >> has made it more closed right it feels more closed and so I don't know that people are looking to build and whereas that hope of oh I can build my own thing that sort of entrepreneurial spirit even >> is more prevalent in those cultures that haven't been quite as commodified that's my take >> um Makes sense. I was just going to say the the comment you had uh by Phillip just now. Hi Philip, how are you? >> S thank you Philip for that comment. I I'll just read it. I think regional camps not happening has hurt as I think there that's where the end users went where at word camp us was more agency owners. Thank you for that. Yeah. And and I just want to hit on that which is I agree with what he's saying >> a lot and and the problem is >> that it costs so much to put on local word camps and I'm not just talking about I mean you know of course monetarily but then voluntarily and all these things that it requires all the resources that are required finding the venues which are expensive and then getting the sponsors and all that, it's really really become um prohibitive in the United States to put on word camps. Uh especially if we're thinking in terms of the way that we did five or six years ago, um where it was like, oh, we want to have 300 people at our word camp or something like that. You know, the idea and I know that originally the idea of word camps was they'd be very very small. They'd be very very regional. Well, we're not even doing any of that. And and I think that that does feed into Word Camp US, uh, you know, if nobody's talking about it outside of the month or two prior to Word Camp US, people aren't going to show up and there and there is no new blood coming in and there is no, you know, from from around the country. And so it's starting to feel even like Word Camp US this year is still going to be more of a regional word camp than it's going to be people coming from all around the world uh and showing up. So I think Phil brings up a really interesting point. >> Yeah, thank you. I think I think too that um you know the organizing thing we here in the US we really were uh I think we got the news more even if it's just like because it's an English language that when we're volunteering to organize you know I don't know if posteconomic translates to every other language but I know that a lot of English- speakaking people were pretty pissed off when someone when to be volunteering and putting out all of this effort when we found out that we're But really what we're doing is just supporting someone who is post-economic. Before we were putting our efforts into something that we all were a part of that we all owned and since it became no it's just one guy's thing. I think in the US we're really aware of that and even just organizing it's like why would we do that for this person and last year's Word Campus US and this year's Word Campus US other than Raquel who is you know just a >> amazing Arizonian in general and very pro Phoenix >> you know like it's been for the last year especially automaticians who are being paid to organize and you know that's better because at least someone's being paid but it it changes the whole nature of the event right not every all the organizers aren't there uh evangelizing it because the automaticians are just doing it so you lose the organizing team you lose that camaraderie and I think that um you know a lot of us have just questioned why would is it even legal for us to volunteer for a for-profit company um which is WPCS WordPress community support as opposed to the WordPress foundation which is a 501c3. So we here in the US realized because of the court case and all the stuff that happened and stuff that Matt said that we were not volunteering for the for the foundation and I think that is not a differentiation that is being made in other countries because lot of other countries have really different nonprofit structures but here in the US you know it feels really bad to be volunteering for a for-profit company which WordPress community services is and you But whether or not it's illegal, I think people just are like, I don't want to give my free time and my energy and, you know, prioritize something that is literally just making some dude richer. >> Yeah. >> And he's being he's being he's being platformed also, right, at these. So, it's it's problematic. Again, >> I just I just don't think about automatic as much as that. Like, I just I'm always thinking about the community and the people that I'm that are me. >> Yeah, sure. But I I have contraction. >> You're not the person who's making that choice. You're like, I don't care. I'm going to go anyway. >> Sure. But >> I'm talking about the people who aren't going. >> Yeah. That's >> Well, and I and I think that I think the other thing that Oh, sorry, Alex. Go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted you. >> That's okay. I was just going to say the big thing for me is it just comes back to the pain point again. Like every time I go to a conference, any kind of conference ever, including work camps, it has always been to solve a problem. I have a problem and I need it solved. I need a job. I need to know more about WordPress. I need to find some leads. I need to understand this community. I need to see what's going on. There was always a practical reason for me to go, a strategic reason, >> not fun. >> And and fun was always the fun side effect, right? Um and and I can't just go label because it's fun, >> right? I can't just go because it's fun. Um, and the the strategic reason for me to go or the pain points that I have with WordPress at this point have been pretty thoroughly solen solved by going to those conferences anymore, even if they were bustling and busy. Uh, just because I'm pretty much connecting with the same people at this point. I'm seeing the same people. I'm talking to the same people. I'm having largely the same conversations. Um, so for me specifically, it it doesn't really solve a problem. So, I don't even know if the local take I think that I missed the locals and I think that that was also really awesome, but I'm not even sure if having more local events would cause me to be more likely to go to them because I still just don't have a strong enough reason. And if if WordPress if these word camps could find that or come up or solve that in some way, that would change it. I don't have an answer to that, but that is just kind of where I'm at mentally with it. >> I'm gonna um I'm We've got so many comments. I can't I can't do anything. >> We all have opinions. >> Yeah. Um I I've got there's no way I can get through them all, but thank you for all the people that have said things in the comments. I don't know, there's like 15 or something and I I just can't get through them all. But there's loads of things that are raised. Um you know, like the age group, the Africa thing, the fact that word camps went from 38 in 2019 down to two in 2025, COVID gets a bit of a mention as well. Um and so on and so forth. Uh, maybe we should make it more educational, says Andrew. Do something a little bit more like Cloudfest. Do Do you know what? I think we need gimmicks. I think more gimmicks. Um, like I don't know, actual bands like that you've heard of or uh or I don't know a custard pie contest, >> keynote speaker that is really might have a take like at Cloudfest uh Miami, which is now or Cloudfest USA, which is now called Cloudfest America's last year. Um they had some keynote speakers that were you know >> outside of Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Outside they're not I mean they were not about WordPress. So like that makes it really interesting. I know I think a couple years ago Word Camp us um >> the NASA thing that people were super into that makes >> the Disney keynote was great for example another one. >> Yeah. >> That's that's like looking at the future. That's like getting perspective that you can't get. That's like a tailored like connect like not a connection but like you know getting input and information from outside from someone who has um you know that big picture and is able to bring it in like that is valuable just hearing >> we're all blowing hot air. Cameron's got it. It's MLY crew >> you know. >> Yeah that's that's that was my first thought. I hear they're out. I don't care how much >> they might come cheap and and give away a motorcycle. So, you know, >> they would definitely come cheap. >> Imagine imagine you got some sort of like has been rock band from the 19. >> Hey, we could have we could have a hackathon where we build a Mly Crew website on WordPress. >> Yes. How we could It could be one of those like speed builds. Who can make Mly Crew Squarespace website in WordPress faster? And the winner gets a motorcycle. >> And the winner gets a Harley-Davidson. Brand new Harley-Davidson motorcycle. >> And Mley crew perfor headlining at Word Camp US in Phoenix in the hot. Now that is just like >> Yeah, >> that is good. >> Cameron, you all it took was four words and you listen, we got so much to get through. I'm quite a bit of the stuff that I've got. You can I don't know if you have a look, but I've basically got a stack of tabs and you can see that we've got almost nowhere through them. So, we'll miss a bunch out, but we'll get a few done. I'll just I'll just run through a few quickly. This is just a nice piece. So, the Yoast Care Fund every year is given out to some uh contributor in the WordPress space. Somebody does a nomination, the nominations get expected, and then some um somebody that is deserving um gets the care fund package, which is really nice. And if memory serves the care fund package, does it allow them to attend a word camp um where before they perhaps were unable to attend for let's say financial reasons, something like that. Anyway, the recipient this time around is and I'm sorry for the name pronunciation. I'm going to go for Fotus Rutis or Rutis or something along those lines. Um nominated by Lena Sturatau. Again, sorry for that, but um I won't really dwell on it. It was just to say that it's lovely that we have a recipient. It's also very nice that Yoast uh continues to do this and finds that there's um you know merit in doing something good. So the community isn't just about showing up to events. It's also little things like this, albeit that this seems to be bound to events. Speaking of events, apparently um the the community as a whole spends something in the region of I don't know $250,000 uh a month on meetup.com. Uh a platform which in some respects I guess is useful, but in other respects is I I think hatred is the wrong word, but I think a lot of people have a very big axe to grind about word uh meetup and the fact that you can't get your list out and things like that. You know, there's a whole load of things. It's it's you know it's a lot. So the gather press plugin has been building ahead of steam for many many years. Patricia who's in the comments is one of the people that's been um organizing it amongst a bunch of other people that you can see in the comments here. Um and it has been IA decision but it says here um and it's on make.wordpress.org. Wanted to give everyone a heads up where we're at with moving away from.com. It's something that the community has talked about for years um as it comes with a cost of a quarter of a million dollars a year. Um so the idea really is to get all the eyes focused on the gather press plugin which is free opensource and hopefully by the time it is uh implemented we'll do all of the heavy lifting that you've been used to on meetup.com. >> This is by far the easiest. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead. I I so gather press this will be hosted on I mean obviously you can host gather press on any site but the official sort of migration of the meetup communities will be to WordPress.org. >> Oh I kind of just had an assumption that it would be everybody would own their like install their own little No, of course that doesn't make sense, does it? For some reason I had it >> is the word of the day. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I'm always >> so I guess everybody gets to go on to that one website. >> Okay. Right. >> That would be my guess. It doesn't say, but I feel like that's sort of like where I mean it makes sense that that's where that would be, right? You install Gather Press on WordPress.org and then everyone organizes there, >> right? Okay. Well, let's wait and see. Yeah, I I I you know, I just got the wrong intuitions about that. I just s I forgot that the meetup commu sorry that the the the word camps and you know WordPress meetups and what have you would obviously be going through a.org account which would then bind presumably to some gather press uh back end. I'm not sure I don't know why I thought I just thought everybody would do their own but that wouldn't make sense would it? There'd be no cross promotion in that scenario. So Patricia, if you've got anything you want us to say then just drop it into the comments if you're still around. That would be lovely. Um, >> I just got one thing to say on it. This is a This to me is a no-brainer. We're talking about building a more open web, creating things in a more open web. >> And at minimum, using an open source tool that other people have access to is the bare minimum you can do to make the web more open. >> Um, I I think >> yeah, that's about all I got. >> Yeah, thank you. Okay, so anyway, that's happening. It would appear that that is now a go. Speaking of go, uh Mark's lights have gone and uh you're going to have to do his >> I'm going to get him an automat I'm going to get him an automated clapper that just claps every 5 seconds. It's going to sound like >> We have this moment car that you can drive around like >> just keeps moving in the background. We have this moment, Mark, where your screen it goes entirely black because your camera Oh, he's not listening. We were just saying, Mark, that your uh your it's really funny because your screen goes entirely black because your camera's gone from like full bright and it can't figure out and then slowly this like ghostly figure of you appears as the camera sort of starts to figure out. >> It's like I'm waking up from a coma. >> Yeah, that's right. >> Yeah. Well, >> that's how I feel every time I'm on the show. It's like >> that's about it. There you go. Perfect. Lovely. Um right so on the same thing back onto the repository um WordPress community support recorded so this was the piece I was referring to earlier I think $372,000 deficit in 2025 even as attendance rose by 27%. So this was the bit where I was saying attendance is up. Um but in the US attendance is massively down. In other parts of the world it's up. And apparently there is a deficit in the pot of money which used to be a surplus. Uh last year I think it was a $350 thou yeah it's here. $350,000 surplus. Um is now a $372,000 deficit. Um >> you uh Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say I don't really I I Rey obviously follows the financials of this and figures it all out, but um I I don't know why that is. I don't know whether it's just like sponsorships have not been dropping or what. I don't really know, but go for it. Um say if you got something. >> Oh, I just at the bottom here there's a note uh about it's like all the way it's like it literally in the last paragraph um the inkind there it is uh buried in the WPCS financials. So, not the WordPress Foundation financials. The WordPress community support financials. Again, a for-profit company owned by the foundation has a separate line item for $2.63 million in donated salary services. So, there are $2.63 million of salaries donated to a for-profit company in kind. And it doesn't show up any of that. What does it mean? Basically, uh, a bunch of automaticians were paid to work on WordPress community services. Oh, okay. >> What that means, and then they donated those salaries, >> but it's it's an expense, so it's canceled out. So, it basically zeros itself out, you know, so they didn't receive a donation. But the crazy part to me is I don't know how you're donating anything to a for-profit company because you can't. But, you know, >> that's not my problem. I'm not a lawyer. I can't take it anywhere. Yeah, if you're a lawyer or you know one >> that stuff um >> so 2.63 million donated then it says in kind in bracket salary services. Okay. >> Mhm. >> Okay. >> So that's basically the people who have like last year um ran Word Camp US, right? Because there were no or no well very few anyway volunteer organizers. That would be the folks who ran Word Camp US who ran the different other projects. And I would assume um you know well I it's hard to say but like you know for example the long now defunct or not defunct marketing team has two full-time automaticians that work there. So it's basically just automatician salaries. >> Okay. So maybe that's thing is it is that like I mean I >> No, that has been there before. It has not been so big. >> Right. Right. Okay. So >> it has been a question every year but it has never been$2.63 $63 million. >> So, the influence being that there's been a need to plug a hole with that line item. In the past, that line item probably wasn't as big. And obviously, this bit here, this deficit of $372,000, uh, is is obviously what Ray decided would be the the sort of lead item there. Anyway, given what we were saying earlier about word camp US and all that kind of stuff, it it paints into that sort of picture, doesn't it, of things being certainly in the US at least anyway in decline and well, let's see how that how that writes itself. Uh, anybody else on that or can I quickly move on? >> Go on. >> Yeah. Okay. So, this is more or less the same thing. So, I I I'll just very very quickly um it says here we were talking about this AI was supposed to kill AI. The trend line disagrees. Apparently, you don't have to read this. Apparently, Google searches for WordPressy things is has actually taken a bit of a swing up. >> I have anecdotal evidence on this, too. I'll share. >> Okay. >> Right. So, it there was a chart and I I think it was Brad Williams from WebDev Studios. He posted something on Twitter and I'm uh if memory serves, it was like the the volume of Google Google searches related to the the word WordPress. and it it was just this slow but steady decline and then really recently it just went whoop and it kind of hockey stickked. >> So I don't know why that is. I have no in intuitions about that but but but I also have thoughts that maybe people are getting a bit bored of AI. Maybe people have discovered that AI actually you do need the CMS in the background to do things. Okay, let's go back to WordPress, shall we? Who knows? But yeah, >> I have a feeling if you took all of search in general and you put it into one giant line chart, it would look very similar. >> Okay, >> I think that uh I I this is I don't know this for sure, but I also saw a response to that earlier where it was showing other tech stacks and they were seeing a very similar curve. Um, and I wonder if it's because Google is starting to show search results that their AI agent is doing on your behalf uh on on behalf of you whenever you search in Google because Gemini and all those other tools, they do what they call fan out queries, right? So, it does so you say conversationally, I need to know about this and it literally goes and it does 15 searches. Oh, it's >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. >> You know, the result of that is a lot more. So the value of a search a hit from a search result isn't what it used to be because the robot is basically collecting all that information and it may not even show it to the person who's making the final decision. >> No. Okay. >> So like you know there is that. That being said, um I have some analytics on Siren. And one of the things that we've built was a uh me and Chris Badget, we did this whole thing around um using Siren with Lifter LMS and Ninja Forms together to basically create a clone of like Udemy. So you could have uh multiple course creators and all this stuff. Literally, you could replace Udemy with that whole setup, right? So uh and we Chris and I did this whole whole thing around that, right? did a video and all this stuff. And I'm starting to see that people are actually asking AI, I want to create my own Udemy. How do I do that? And AI is literally saying in that conversation, oh, you could totally do this with Siren, Lifter, LMS, and Ninja Forms. There's this video that literally teaches you how to do this. >> That's so Yeah. So, those things are definitely still happening. But I I just I thought that was interesting that um to highlight like >> WordPress is still being talked about even in AI in some context. >> Right. I'm going to race through some other stuff. >> Yeah, please continue. Sorry. >> No, no, no. Sorry. Sorry. So, first one is this. Uh speaking of AI again, this is some new things that's coming in WordPress. WordPress is AI 1.1.0. The only thing I'm going to really mention is this. I'm going to click the play button and see what you make of it. So basically this is called uh type ahead text and what it does is you drop the cursor in somewhere and you've obviously got to have some stuff in there already and then it will figure out like what could the next sentence be and it seems to be doing on a whole sentence basis. So you probably didn't see that. But if I just skip back look somebody drops the cursor in and it just boom says this is another possible next sentence and here's another one and here's another one. And whilst I think it's technically clever, a bit of me slowly dies when I uh see that because I just want the human to do that bit. But I realize I'm living in the Denzian period of the of the internet. So >> anyway, there you go. I I it's a lovely implementation. I'm sure for loads of people this will be really useful. There was other another new thing and it was all about encryption keys, but we don't have enough time. I would like to point out that I met a lovely human being. I I talked about it earlier. This is the podcast episode that I did with Tess. The reason that I put it there because it it was such an interesting conversation about, you know, I'm saying I a bit of me dies. Tess is sort of like the antidote to that. She is very bullish on AI but also very creative and so she manages to steer that [ \_\_ ] beautifully. So, um, go and listen to >> Do you know when when Tess joined Automatic? >> No, I don't actually. No. Uh, no. I was trying to use my brain to uh summon up a date, but realized I don't have much. No, it's predigiously empty up there. >> Nothing there about the date specifically is what I meant. >> Goldfish swimming around in some fluid. That's all there. >> Well, whatever it is, it makes for a good host. So, >> well, turns out you don't have to think very much. Um, okay. New product on the scene. Fluent have got all the products in all the WordPress space. They've come up with a new one. It's called Fluent Player. It's a video player for WordPress with loads of bells and whistles. So, >> y'all, their CMS is pretty good. >> It is pretty good. It is pretty fluent CMS. I'm like, I don't know where these folks came from or popped out of, but uh I And it's all vibe coded probably, but it's well done. So, they're amazing. >> They've been around for a while. >> Yeah, they've been around for a long time. Yeah. >> Okay. I kind of missed it, but they're doing great. I was like, "Okay, >> we're actually using the uh I just adopted the Fluent CMS for >> You mean CRM?" >> The WP CRM. What was I saying? >> CMS. >> CMS. >> Oh, I meant CRM. Yeah, that would be weird if we were talking about another >> It's like a whole CRM built on top. Sorry, a CMS built on a CMS. Yeah, >> that's just called a page builder. >> That's called meta. >> We're using the CRM on uh the WP community collective site. >> Oh, neat. Okay. Yeah. And I was like, "Oh, this is pretty good. I'm not mad at it. I don't want to buy code anymore." >> All of their products, if you look at their whole products, it kind of it all relies like they all lean in on each other. So, you know, if you've got um a community like let's say Chris Badget and the siren thing, an LMS thing, drop this in and you can do loads of things within that community with the video. Like, I don't know, you can put interstitials in and ads for things and it's just like YouTube on steroids. the sort of control you never had. So, it definitely worth looking at. Brand new. I mean, their stuff I think is great. >> Um, in the European Union, uh, we smuggled through some I mean, I'm not in the European Union, but, uh, in the European Union, this kind of got passed, this sort of this mass surveillance thing. It turns out that um by some crazy procedural hijacking they were able to pass a law which undo a load of the privacy pro uh protections and it would appear that if that stays on the books it's going to be illegal to encrypt things. So um on the face of it it's all about you know child protection and things like that but it does mean that things like your WhatsApp and your signal is going to be under scrutiny. But in order to get this to work, they had to do this incredibly weird bit of chess where they managed to get it passed on a day when almost nobody was present and it was the last day of the parliament and if nobody shows up it's counted as a yes vote on that day and so a load of people didn't show up because they were on their holidays and all of their votes counted as a yes and so it got through. I'm not an expert, but it read like something out of a Hollywood script for >> See, that's called every piece of legislation in the United Nathan's like, "That sounds like it comes out of a Hollywood movie." We're like, "Oh, that's okay." >> Okay, that's uh >> No, that's just how we work here. >> Um getting caught up in the drag net of weird stuff as well is is Meta. Meta decided, "Oh, just stop. Would you just stop and think, Meta, please have a thought? So, they launched a product which they which they were gonna let everybody have a go and it allowed you to make AI images out of anybody else's photos on their platform. What could possibly go wrong? People were getting targeted with their girlfriend >> after all the all the the kids are doing the things like that information is already out there about what kids are doing with the Nutify apps and all that stuff. And then to put this, I'm like, what? >> No, >> this is the stuff that the younger generation is seeing as opposed to the stuff that we're talking about. >> Right. Right. Right. >> So, this is why you're seeing so much skepticism around AI, around people outside of tech circles, because they're seeing the horrific, awful ways that they're being that that they're getting bad experiences. Imagine how horrible it would be to be just scrolling on Facebook and get an ad that's targeted at you that is representing a picture of your now ex-girlfriend, but the ad doesn't know it's your ex. And like that would be horrible. You know what I mean? Let's just think for a second. >> The thing about stuff like this though is that you get the feeling that you Okay, I could be completely wrong about this, but you get the feeling that they're clever. I mean, they're not stupid, right? You get the feeling they're clever enough. And the calculation goes a bit like this. Is this going to cause a brewhaha? Probably. Do you think we'll get away with it? >> Probably. Probably. >> Should we just go for it? Yeah. Heck yeah. And And if we get >> That sounds a lot like uh WordPress if you're asking. >> Okay. Yeah. So, um basically they've pulled this feature after what the BBC describe as a blowback. Um and I'm I'm glad that there was a blowback. We need to stand up to this nonsense. That's just ridiculous. So, anyway, there we go. There's my there's my standing on a stool. Um I haven't got time for that but basically um it's it's called once unimaginable. No, let's do it quickly. Are you all right for another couple of minutes? Okay, everybody. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So this is to say that some of the big brands probably all American brands I would have thought judging by the size of them. They're now using their leverage to block Google thinking that Google needs their stuff in order to surface it in the AI. So why don't they flex their muscles? And so that appears to be what's going on. A few of the big big brands are doing exactly that. And I can't remember what they were, but it's a it's a direct play for well, you're coming for our content and you're no longer sending us traffic, so why don't we just cut you off at the knees and stop giving you content? Y >> which seems like that that could quickly go wrong for Google. Um we'll wait and see. really right for all of the tiny publications that are like >> like not have do not have journalistic ethics, do not have, you know, journalistic processes in checking the editorial. What could go wrong? >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I summarized it earlier. I says publishers are increasingly cons um considering opting out of Google search to protest the company's use dual use of crawlers for both search indexing and AI without compensation. This reflects a bit of a bargaining strategy where media companies including USA Today, I guess that's a big thing, I don't know, are preparing to risk losing traffic to protect their content being scraped for generative AI. So, >> well, what's what's interesting to me about this is this is just to me this just raises a tell that for the first time ever, these companies are starting to feel like they have a little bit of leverage on the web. Not ever, but for the first time since >> Google became what Google is, right? Google became Alphabet, I guess. Yeah. >> Um, >> yeah. >> This this is the like to me the first tell that they feel that they have their own ways to distribute and aren't relying on Google as much as they used to. >> Yeah. >> Which has got to be keeping Google up. >> Yeah. You got to think some dominoes are beginning to fall. That's kind of interesting. And then this will be the last one for today. I came across this. I haven't used it. Don't know anything about it. If if you enjoy talking to your computer, like I really I've got into the habit of pressing the function key and I use like whisper flow or some alternative and I it just literally types out in front of me what I'm saying. And uh I always like the idea of doing things locally. So I came across this. It's called fluid voice. It's for Mac only at the moment. No, it isn't. iOS, Windows, and Mac it says. So there you go. I'm wrong about that. Um you go and have a play. It's a local thing which I also appreciate. The idea being that you could speak and only your own Mac would actually know what's going on. So there you go. >> They're great. I use them a lot. >> Okay. Yeah. Oh, it's totally brilliant. Like I I use one at the moment. I actually can't remember because I flip between them so often. Yeah. >> But I can pretty much type what I want at the speed at which I can talk. And I can talk pretty quick. >> My hands have stopped getting sore from typing so much. But I'm starting to lose my voice. That's how much I was going to say. Literally, it's it's the stress has transitioned. >> I don't know what she's about. >> Wow. So, is it carpal tunnel for the vocal cords? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Like like an absess or something. >> Yeah. Nodes. It's called nodes. I have nodes on my on my Yeah. Nodes on your vocal cords. I have them because I used to share >> not nodejs. Just nodes. >> Basically, nodes. >> So, here's the only bit of medicine I'm going to ever say on this show. Your vocal cords sort of slap together and the slapping together produces the sounds. And I have little like call it warts but they're called nodes. And because they prevent them like making a perfect slap together because the little nodes get in the way. I have to try much harder to speak and so I lose my voice really quickly. And there you go. Now that shell >> just just to just to follow up there. Makes for a great speaker. >> Yeah. Oh yeah. That's they run out of run out of voice after 15 minutes. Off. You you were always going to be a podcaster. You never know. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? Uh that's it. We did it. We got through it. >> Wait, I have I want to plug something. >> Oh, plug something. Sorry. >> Hey, if you haven't taken the state of the community survey yet from the WP community collective, get on over there because it closes July 17th. And we need your input. We need your perspective. We need to know what's happening. So, please take the survey. Please share the survey. It is going to be published publicly. It's, you know, we're gonna put all the data out there. So, I mean, aggregated clearly. >> We actually mentioned it last week. Yeah, we mentioned it last week. Yeah. No, you're welcome. And um what I'll do is if anybody's listening to this because we don't have the URL prepared on the screen or anything, I'll dig it out. >> Do you want to just say it on onto the into the podcast in case somebody listens and never reads? >> I mean, it's so long. It's the wp communityolctive.comstate-of-the- community. >> Okay, that's not too bad. Just Google it. It actually will come up. You Google state of the community survey. It'll come up. >> Okay. >> You haven't opted out of being >> I was gonna say good. >> The AI is going to be like, "Are you sure you want to do that? Do you know what you're talking about?" >> Well, no. The AI would be like, "Can I fill it out for you?" I think I know what you would put in that form. I'm pretty sure I know what you're absolutely right. >> Yeah. >> Uh, so there's a bunch of comments that we never got to. Very short. Ross, you wrong moment to arrive, but really appreciate you joining us. Nathan, you lie like a rug. I don't know whether that's good or bad. I'm pretty sure it's good. I'm going with good. Let's go with that. Um >> I think it's bad. >> Yeah, it's lying really bad, isn't it? Yeah, >> nomad skateboarding. There's uh I think that's really fas that's something that I think is really important that the uh that the fact is not everyone can afford the AI subscriptions let alone the usage tiers you know so and not everyone works for that so that there's a reason that there is a split it's like not everyone knows not everyone is is is able to use >> the AI the way that we've been talking about it >> yeah you were saying you were alluding to that in your cont Yeah that's great okay >> just came out and said it. So, I thought >> Yeah, he just came out and said it. So, there we go. I think I'm going to call this episode a Yeah, maybe I'll just call it uh MLY crew. Actually, the the bot comment maybe a bug up YOUR M NO, I'M GOING WITH THAT. A BUG UP your MLY crew. Let's go with that. >> There you go. >> There you go. >> That's what we're gonna have. Um so, before the show ends, say you don't know this, we do this sort of slightly humiliating Oh, I know. Oh, you know. Okay. So, would you mind all of you raising? There you go. Just give us a smile. Everybody smile. Everybody smile. There we go. That's all we need. Thank you so much to our panelists. Here they are. Mark and Se's doing all the fun things. And Alex, really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. I genuinely like I know it like the words just come out of my mouth and it sounds so insincere, but I actually genuinely >> That's just because you're British. >> Oh, really? It's >> Yeah, that's why. That's why. Yeah. Yeah. No. Are we Are we considered to be insincere? Seriously, that's uh because I >> He's asking sincerely. >> Yeah, I am. >> You're asking to Okay. >> I don't know. I'm just making stuff up. Don't you know? >> Well, anyway, there we go. >> Thank you to you three, but also thank you for the wealth of comments that have come in. Really appreciate it. If you three want to hang out for a bit, we'll end the call and mooch about for a bit. That would be nice. But, uh, the rest of you, take care. We will see you next week. Take it easy. >> Thanks, Nathan. Appreciate. Yeah, no worries. Take it easy. Bye. Bye. Bye., This Week in WordPress #380, YouTube, 01kxh48w5s1fx0ecr20b2efj06.