Back From Break  ## Metadata - Author: [[Crossword]] - Full Title: Back From Break - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/fe18c330-c545-481d-a9e9-f8ab1edc93f4 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Podcast Growth and Sponsors** - Jonathan shares his nervous excitement about Crossword entering season nine with new sponsors and growth. - The podcast feels like it's "growing up" after five years of continuous fun and evolution. Transcript: Jonathan Luke, I'm feeling like a little touch of nerves for the first time in a while with Crossword. Luke Why is that? Jonathan Well, we've had a good break, but we've done a bunch of things over the break. And I'm like, I feel like Crossword is growing up to some degree. Luke Is it because we've got sponsors now? Jonathan Yeah, so that's part of it. We have two new sponsors, I'm quite excited about. Big Scoots and Event Koi have come on board as sponsors of Crossword. We've got room for one more sponsor as well for anyone who's interested. And, yeah, I think there is this degree of like, okay, this is season nine that we're kicking off now. ([Time 0:00:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2cdac171-5c83-4aae-9aae-18819453d02a)) - **Handling Podcast Sponsorship** - Be transparent with audiences about the influence and expectations of sponsors. - Use sponsors' products genuinely to provide honest opinions and avoid intrusive ads in short episodes. Transcript: Luke Lot has happened in wordpress too i want to i i think it's worth just being open and transparent with our listeners about sponsorship. Ah, yes. We've never had sponsors before. So I thought, why don't we, it's not something I talked to you about before. Why don't we just give our listeners, set some expectations. Okay. What can you expect now that Big Scoots and Event Koi are paying to sponsor our show? Jonathan Right. What's interesting, too, because this was making me think back to WP Tavern. I asked you a direct question. Hold on. Hold on. We'll come back to it. What can they expect? What goes in the back of my mind is no matter what we say, still going to be like what folks what folks actually like take away from it. Right. Like actions speak louder than words. We know that I think with confidence that the folks at the tavern like said whatever they wanted to say. Matt didn't come in and say you should or shouldn't do this. And yet there was this undertone to it where it's like, hey, you're being paid by Matt to do this stuff. And so there's going to be a bias in it. So I don't know. I think we could say whatever we're going to say, but yet there is something that changes when you introduce sponsors that I don't know how to say anything about except to be transparent. And then people decide for themselves. Yeah. Luke I think one thing that we've committed to is to actually using the products of our sponsors. And that way we can give our honest opinion if it comes up, which it may not. And also we are not going to be doing ad spots in our 15 minute episodes, but I'm really excited for some of the longer episodes that we've got planned for this season. Yep. Yes. Jonathan So to give a preview for folks to know what, for folks to know what's coming, as Luke mentioned, we won't be doing ad spots in the 15s. We'll have links in the show notes for the sponsors because we do want to call that out and we appreciate it. And for the perspective episodes that will be coming up, we are going to experiment with doing ads within those. ([Time 0:01:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/643e3997-a0b4-47af-bf75-34bc793c9ddf)) - **Exploring Hugo CMS** - Crossword switched from WordPress to Hugo to experiment with other CMS tools and broaden perspectives. - Hugo offers easier theming from a developer standpoint but serves different goals than WordPress. Transcript: Jonathan Why is it not on WordPress? Luke Yeah, that's a good question. I guess we wanted to experiment with something else. Yeah, it's actually been fun. You set it up for us on Hugo. Jonathan And one of the things that I've enjoyed thinking through now is like, okay, let's make sure that we're playing with other systems and like CMSs and like ways things work. Still building stuff with WordPress on a regular basis. And I think it's helpful to have a broader perspective. So this season, we're using Hugo. Luke Yeah, I personally have found theming in Hugo, in particular theming, a lot easier than using WordPress. But also, it's a developer tool. You know, it's writing templates and CSS and HTML. So it's been fun. Not quite the same goals as WordPress, right? ([Time 0:03:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8d77e783-db75-4276-b766-510ec9f6b89a)) - **WordPress 6.8 Cleanup Release** - WordPress 6.8 felt like a refreshing cleanup release, making the platform feel polished and stable. - Contributors like Tammy Lister played key roles in ensuring the update was well crafted and impactful. Transcript: Jonathan And I thought it might be nice to just touch on a few of the highlights from the break. So WordPress 6.8 dropped since we were talking last. Have you updated your sites? Like, how are you? Yeah, of course. It was one of the ones that I felt most like, yeah, click, let's go. When the next update came afterwards, I rolled that out right away as well. And the last big update for a while, Brian. It looks like about a year until 6.9 ends up dropping. And this 6.8 release has had a lot of like, hey, let's just clean things up. Let's make sure things are in good shape. Tammy Lister did some awesome work as design lead. A lot of other great folks came out and got a bunch of things, made a bunch of things happen. ([Time 0:04:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8a4a9cf1-9da3-4930-bbfe-4ae5493aac45)) - **Benefits of Slower WordPress Updates** - Some WordPress product builders welcome the year-long pause between major updates to stabilize development. - This slower pace gives time to better build products around newer WordPress editors without rushed changes. Transcript: Luke It's not always the most sexiest topic to put into a release, but when we're forced to do minor releases in this way, it could be good. We also had, in addition to the 6.8, we had the Jubilee, the WordPress Jubilee. Jonathan Before we touch on that, one thing that struck me that I was surprised to hear, I've heard from several product folks that are actually like happy about the idea of it being a year because It's giving them this like, like, especially if you're building around like the new editor, um, it's like, Hey, you know, there's not going to be a big change for a year. So it gives you time. So I was surprised to hear that because I've generally personally felt like, oh man, we're slowing down. Like this isn't good. But it's been interesting that it doesn't match what I'm actually hearing from people that are building products for WordPress. ([Time 0:05:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3ab33683-a281-4f28-860c-53f91d00cef7)) - **WordPress Jubilee and Community Reset** - The WordPress Jubilee reset banned contributors but kept accountability through a selective reinstatement process. - Using the WordPress News platform to announce this caused confusion by exposing all users to internal community drama. Transcript: Luke Jubilee, what's this about? For once i am i'm not going to use a cricket reference i'll use a jewish reference instead have you heard the of the shmita year i have not yeah so this like this whole jubilee thing it's I didn't realize that non-jews knew this idea, this word. But it comes from this ancient Jewish custom of resetting debts every however many years it is. I think it's every 50 years, seven times seven. Seven years grouped seven times. And the next year is the Jububilee and so you know that's that's cool i didn't know that a jewish thing but but you know it's nice so what happened is matt has reset the table he has reinvited Back those people who got banned we were worried for a second he was just gonna reinvite everyone who's been banned which would be terrible right but mary stepped in and made sure that Didn't happen and so you know people like yost and say reed and whoever else is who's uh been ryan who's been ryan mccain from wordpress there yeah they've been let back in, which is great. Do you know, though, Jonathan, I mean, I don't want to complain about this. You don't? Are you sure? Really, it's a step in the right direction. Don't you think so? I think so, too. Jonathan It's not an apology, but it's kind of close to one. I was trying to find the actual language. Because didn't he do this on his personal site or was it on.org? I was really a little bit confused. It was on.org. Luke And that's my only complaint is that it was on WordPress News. Right. And I feel like Matt has forgotten that every time he posts to WordPress news, it shows up in the dashboard of every single WordPress website in the world. WordPress users who have no idea about the community or the drama that's happening get these notices like there's a fork of WordPress. Okay, wait, so I'm confused. The WordPress Jubilee. Jonathan Found the post when i read this post the first time i thought there was a story about his what i thought was like his catholic faith and how like there's this moment of inspiration and there's Some narrative to it but when i'm reading the post now it just it's just the paragraph that says as i said we're dropping all the human blocks so i'm i was certain that i read something different When he first published it. I don't recall any of that. Luke Maybe he put that on X or his blog. Jonathan Okay. So I found there's a post that says reflecting. And anyway, it feels like there was an edit made to this, which that's totally fine. But yeah, it seemed like it was connected to, he wrote about after the passing of the Pope that it had like an effect on his thinking. I may be mischaracterizing it, but that's the sense I had, and it's not quite adding up. Well, yeah, I'm not sure about the actual impact of it. I'm happy to see folks like Ryan and Say and others not feel like they've lost Yoast because there's so much of your identity that gets connected to your contributions. I'm also happy to see that it's not just a reversal on everything because there are folks who, whether like there are, there, there should be accountability for actions and processes In place, which I think was the heart of the complaint that it didn't feel like there's a process that had been followed. Do you understand what I mean though? Luke Like inserting this drama into every WordPress dashboard in the world? Can we just have like a separate little, why wasn't this on the make WordPress? Why does this have to be on the WordPress news blog? Jonathan Yes, that to me does feel like a, I would argue, in Matt's favor in this case, that it's an unintended abuse of power, but still feels like an abuse of power. Luke And this like... Jonathan Yeah, just abuse of power. Luke I don't know. I think it's just short-sighted or, yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's malicious. I don't think so either, but... Please stop doing it. ([Time 0:06:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4b022dc-5a5f-4f67-9170-d78457d6b94a)) - **Gravatar as Identity Platform** - Gravatar is positioned as an "open identity layer" offering users control over their online identity and avatar. - This platform aims to extend into AI contexts beyond just a convenient profile image service. Transcript: Jonathan While we're talking about matt um he just did a post on remember gravitar which i thought was a good uh so i so first i saw james lepage on x reference something that ronnie had written about Gravitar i use gravitar and the way that i think about gravitar personally today it has been a it's a convenient place where i can go to to put a new profile picture and know that all the Old wordpress sites where i've posted before will be automatically updated because that would be just a nightmare but that's the extent of which i like associate gravitar it's like A profile photo convenience and it seems like there's something with gravitar where it's like you're like taking your like ai profile your profile with you to connect with other things Like i don't know there's there seems to be some greater ambitions there that i'm like okay uh is there more to it than just your photo yes um the way that matt describes this he says gravitar Has always been about giving people control over their identity online one avatar one profile synced across the web, verify connections with a fully open API. Gravatar is a true open identity layer for the internet and now for AI. ([Time 0:11:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dc43bbae-6407-4b8e-9ec8-1233709d8bc2)) - **AI-Assisted Plugin Development** - Jonathan used AI tools to create a WordPress plugin, reigniting his enthusiasm for coding. - Luke was initially skeptical but provided useful feedback during Jonathan's AI-assisted development. Transcript: Jonathan To default to a position of they know what they're doing okay so over the break i made a wordpress plugin i actually don't like the phrase vibe coding. I find it insulting, but I used AI tools and I had quite the experience with you where I felt that initially you were pretty like, what is this, Jonathan? Like, why are you bothering with this? That's a little bit ungenerous. You were actually kind enough to take the time to give me feedback on things um but i found myself i actually it was a lot of fun i found myself starting to have fun again with like making Something or i had an idea for a plugin was able to scaffold it and they take the feedback that you gave me so i'm interested in exploring more of that later but it was uh that was that was A highlight for me over the break Yeah, so I'm resistant ([Time 0:12:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5236ce08-6ba0-4c3f-9582-1b0ec662c596))