Perspectives With Rae Morey  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **From Newspaper Stands To WordPress** - Rae started as a newspaper journalist after a high-school careers fair sparked her interest in reporting. - She later transitioned to web development and joined WPMU Dev, which became her entry into WordPress professional work. Transcript: Rae Morey Oh, geez. So I'm a trained journalist. If I go way, way back to the beginning, it's funny because I've been having these conversations about what do I want to do when I grow up with my son? He's five. And, uh, this week he decided he wants to be a police officer after recently telling me he wanted to be a science teacher at the local high school. So it's been a bit of a change, but, um, you know, for me, it made me think, you know, what, what was, what was that experience like for me when I was his age? You know, I wanted to be a teacher too. I had a doctor at one point, a nurse, a lawyer of all things. And, um, but when I was 13, I went to a, um, a careers fair at my high school and I was walking around the different booths, talking to all the different people. And I came across one for the local newspaper and I stopped and thought, I've never thought about this before. I always, I was a voracious reader when, when I was a child and still am. And I loved writing stories. And I thought, wow, this makes sense. I had a chat to the journalist who was manning the booth and he was lovely, explained, you know, what he did day to day. And I thought, okay, cool. That's what I'm going to do. And then that just stuck. And I became a newspaper journalist here in Australia and worked first for Fairfax. And then I switched over to News Limited at one point or News Corp. And yeah, so I always loved chatting to people and hearing people's stories and and and writing them and um so there came a point while I was working at News Limited where things just kind Of just got really tough in the industry and I thought well maybe now's the time to jump into something else into the other part of what I studied at uni. I did computer science and journalism at uni, like a comp sci arts degree, which at the time all my lecturers were like, you're weird. Who wants to do that? You just do one or the other. But these days it makes sense, right? Nobody really, well, my teachers at the time didn't have that foresight. And so I jumped into the other part of my degree, which I did a lot of web development and I was never a great programmer but did programming and yeah so I went to work for WP Me Dev. Oh yeah. What was that like more than 10 years ago now and so that was that was it was my introduction to WordPress I did a lot of websites long before that. You know, everybody does websites with friends and yourself. And I had 50 blogs or whatever, you know, always working on sites but never actually sticking with them. And then I worked for WPMU Dev and that was kind of my entry to the WordPress professionally, the WordPress world. ([Time 0:06:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c581a46-3c43-4e81-86bd-1379923feb40)) - **Bad News Draws The Biggest Clicks** - The most-read Repository stories in 2025 were mostly negative, showing readers gravitate to bad news. - Rae found sustainability coverage attracted unusually high interest compared with other topics. Transcript: Rae Morey What were the biggest stories of last year? It was interesting. I published a kind of a year-in post on the 30th of December covering the most read stories of the year. So these were the stories that people clicked on and read. And yeah, it was really interesting to see what were the top 10 because, you know, 80% of them, eight out of 10 were negative. And that's a real shame. There were stories like, I think that the most read story, which I found really interesting was how the WordPress sustainability team was shut down. Yeah, people care about sustainability, it turns out. That had more. So what I didn't include in that piece was that story had twice as many clicks as the second most read story. So people did do care about sustainability. ([Time 0:13:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b5ef0822-dd5c-41bb-a8c2-09ccb5047156)) - **Sustainability Team Left On The Sidelines** - Rae described the sustainability team being disbanded despite volunteer reps gaining momentum. - She noted the team members were self-employed volunteers whose work was sidelined by the project. Transcript: Rae Morey And then by the time January came around, I think what really struck me was that it was a, there were four team reps for the sustainability team. And they were all people who were self-employed and just doing what they could in their own time to represent the sustainability effort in the project. And their efforts, I mean, they weren't working on this full time. They didn't have a huge team. They were just doing what they could and their work was just kind of tossed to the side, which was a real shame. They were starting to build momentum. But, you know, it'd be great to see those sustainability efforts come out in other parts of the project and they make teams. Yeah, we'll see. ([Time 0:16:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/02031095-be96-4487-b081-859d317cb76a)) - **Quiet Wins: Campus Connect Momentum** - Positive initiatives like WordPress Campus Connect and Credits gained momentum but received little attention amid louder controversies. - These programs are driving generational adoption by integrating WordPress into university education globally. Transcript: Rae Morey One of my favorite things over the past year has been the momentum behind WordPress Campus Connect and WordPress credits. I think, you know, we talked for years about generational change and getting more people into WordPress. Well, here's a project or a couple of projects that are helping that effort. And the vast majority of, you know, the people closest to the project don't really care about it. I've published stories and they hardly get any clicks, but you know what, I'm going to keep publishing stories. You know, I think the, how Campus Connect came to be was such an awesome example of, you know, innovation just in a small place in India. The local WordPress meetup were like, we want more people coming to our meetup. How can we do that? Okay, let's tell kids at the local university about WordPress and train them. And that's grown into this global movement where we're seeing university students in other parts of the world, several different countries, all learning about WordPress and joining WordPress meetups. ([Time 0:19:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/816054c8-3c1f-402f-b8e3-97205cac1a4b)) - **Real-Time Collaboration Is Inevitable But Costly** - WordPress 7.0 will likely spotlight real-time collaboration efforts and infrastructure challenges. - Rae expects adoption to be uneven because real-time features need specialized hosting resources. Transcript: Rae Morey 2026. Well, definitely 7.0. That's coming out soon. I think I've been tracking what's happening with real-time collaboration and the various efforts to get that off the ground. VIP has a solution out for its customers, clients. We're seeing this other effort. We're seeing VIP and others at Automatic who are looking, you know, working on something for wider adoption with WordPress. So that's coming along. It'll be really interesting to see when that happens. I know a lot of people generally are like, oh, real-time collaboration. No, we don't need it. Why are we focusing? I hear a lot from the agency crowd. Totally get that. But then you see some of these other big sites with dozens, hundreds of users. How on earth are they creating content without being able to collaborate? And, you know, and we're so used to real-time collaboration in Google Docs and in other software. This is just something that has to happen. ([Time 0:24:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c07bead-3a3a-4ffb-ae4a-cee83a7616b4)) - **Prepare For Premium Host Requirements** - Expect premium hosting or paid host add-ons to enable real-time collaboration due to special infrastructure needs. - Rae suggests users may pay hosts to enable advanced collaborative features rather than expect them on all servers. Transcript: Rae Morey Headed. Yeah, I totally agree. Um because yeah like you say the infrastructure that's needed to support you know that that kind of um i don't even know what the word is but you know that technical ambition to get real-time Collaboration working it just doesn't exist with regular hosts and so uh vip have set up their own infrastructure to support their clients to make it work but that's not available to Everybody and it would be very costly. So yeah, we could see, we could see, you know, regular users, if they want it, they could ask their host to switch it on for them for an additional fee. ([Time 0:26:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/353997a3-a35e-440c-9160-5fc1a073a669)) - **Diversify Sponsorship For Independence** - Rae spreads sponsorship across about 10 slots to avoid overreliance on a single sponsor and maintain editorial independence. - She also runs a supporter community for recurring reader contributions and private Slack access. Transcript: Rae Morey A big one. And it is always front of mind for me because, you know, like anybody running a business, you're trying to ensure its survival and financial sustainability. Look, I'll be honest, I'm starting the year without a major sponsor. We don't have a newsletter sponsor and that has me concerned. At the same time, you know, I did the numbers at the start of this week when I was back at work. And I, we almost, I, we, it's me and my profiter Mike, almost hit the financial goal, the very modest financial goal we set for last year. So that was really heartening. But at the same time, I'm entering this year with half the sponsor slots filled. And so I'd love to chat to any companies that are interested in sponsoring. You know, this project, the repository is really reliant on community and ecosystem support sponsors. ([Time 0:30:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2649fad9-5a2c-4d8f-b84b-77c358cabe35)) - **Starting The Year Without A Major Sponsor** - Rae entered the year without a major newsletter sponsor and felt concern about financial vulnerability. - Despite that, she and her producer nearly met their modest financial goal for the prior year. Transcript: Rae Morey Look, I'll be honest, I'm starting the year without a major sponsor. We don't have a newsletter sponsor and that has me concerned. At the same time, you know, I did the numbers at the start of this week when I was back at work. And I, we almost, I, we, it's me and my profiter Mike, almost hit the financial goal, the very modest financial goal we set for last year. So that was really heartening. But at the same time, I'm entering this year with half the sponsor slots filled. ([Time 0:30:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38166202-173a-4fca-a4a8-2842a3d1e355)) - **Why Sponsorship Beats Reader-Only Models** - Rae believes sponsorship best fits the Repository because the WordPress reader base is too small to fully support a reader-pay model. - She balances sponsor revenue with community supporters to sustain the publication. Transcript: Rae Morey Yeah. I've thought about this a lot, you know, since starting, starting the newsletter in 2019 and then, you know, expanding it more in the past 18 months. Sponsorship makes the most sense to get backing from the community. And I purposefully have around 10 sponsor slots because I don't want to just have one company that I go to for sponsorship that is dictating everything. If I spread that out, you know, that's, there's a bit more space, you know, for me to, you know, have community backing and, you know, not, you know, spread out the influence. I also have a supporter community, people who contribute monthly or yearly, who support the repository and have access to our private Slack. But I've thought about financial models a lot and what I've got at the moment seems to make the most sense. Yep. Because the WordPress community, it's not big enough to rely just on readers, like a lot of news organizations like The Guardian or 404 Media or some of those other publications, tech Publications that rely on readers because the readership's just not that huge. ([Time 0:33:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c13bed86-4a51-4e39-87b1-465c006313e7)) - **AI And Layoffs Will Reshape The Ecosystem** - AI, business consolidation, and layoffs converge to shape the WordPress ecosystem's near-term trajectory. - Rae plans deeper reporting on how businesses handle AI and workforce impacts this year. Transcript: Rae Morey At the same time, we're seeing the convergence of the business landscape and layoffs with what's happening with AI. That's a really interesting story that I'm looking to dig into a bit more in the next few weeks. Jonathan Um, you know, as far as talk about AI and the WordPress plugin directory. Oh my God. Rae Morey That you're covering that a lot lately. It keeps coming up. Um, yeah, it's an interesting one with AI. It was a thing this week, right? Jonathan Yeah. Rae Morey Yeah. Yeah. Which I'll be covering too soon. But, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that kind of unpacks this year. Businesses figuring out how to deal with AI, how to approach their workforces and productivity. I think that'll be an interesting story that we see unpacking this year. We'll also see a lot more people get involved with the project, I think, because of WordPress Campus Connect and credits this year. ([Time 0:37:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cffe0588-a236-464c-a07c-8c1f9181c465)) - **AI Replies Flood Plugin Review Channels** - Jonathan reads repetitive, AI-generated plugin-review responses daily and finds them infuriating and disingenuous. - He sees many AI-generated plugins fail review due to inability to process reviewer feedback. Transcript: Jonathan I've been getting these emails to the plugin review channel. And I reckon I read this same email, you know, variations of it four or five times a day. And here's what it says. Thank you very much for your detailed message and for the time and effort the volunteer review team dedicates to helping plugin authors improve their work. I sincerely apologize for the issues identified in my initial submission and for any inconvenience they may have caused. I have carefully read your entire email, reviewed the relevant guidelines and addressed all the points raised. Thank you again for your patience, guidance and support throughout this process. I truly appreciate the valuable work done by the volunteers and look forward to your feedback. You know, Ray, that makes me so angry. Rae Morey If I got that four or five times a day, I would just delete it. I wouldn't want to read that every day. Jonathan Yeah, it's obviously it's AI generated. It's never exactly the same, but it's basically the same. And I've been getting a lot of these in addition to the AI generated plugins, which I can deal with. ([Time 0:41:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e8f5d822-934e-492d-b1db-ed91a48bb628)) - **Speed Matters In News Publishing** - Rae often abandons stories when sources don't respond promptly because online news cycles kill delayed pieces. - She warns that if reporting isn't published within 48–72 hours the story typically loses traction. Transcript: Rae Morey Does that look like? Interesting question um there are I'm always working on several stories at the same time uh some days I'll publish nothing because I'm working on other things or just working on sponsorship. Other days I'll publish three or four stories in a day because things have just come together and I just need to get, you know, just need to hit publish. Stories that I haven't published are usually because I've hit a wall with confirming details or getting quotes or, you know, or someone's just taken six weeks to get back to me. For God's sake, people reply in a timely manner. I can't, you know, in, in a news cycle, especially online, if you don't publish something within 24 hours or 48 hours or 72 hours at the latest, that story's dead. ([Time 0:45:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eddf55c5-98ed-4463-a4be-a8c997c56e45)) - **Fast, Lazy Reporting Distorts The News Cycle** - Rae frequently finds other outlets publish fast but low-quality WordPress stories and this rewards sloppy reporting. - She sometimes contacts those outlets to correct inaccuracies and has had pieces removed. Transcript: Rae Morey So many times. There's one or two sites in particular, but yeah, I've read stories about certain things, about certain topics over the past year where I've just read it and I've been like, oh my God. There have been a couple of cases where I've actually reached out and said, look, that story is incorrect. I've been in touch with so-and and what you've published is just not true. And I've had a couple of stories taken down from other sites because. Jonathan Name names, right? No, I'm not going to. You should publish it on the repository saying so-and publishes false article about, you know. Rae Morey Not false, but just lazy. It's not false. It's usually just lazy where they have, they've just been like, oh, you know, this is going to get a lot of clicks. I'm going to publish something really quickly. And they'll get something out within a few hours. ([Time 0:47:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/de9230a2-6268-4f50-8b46-e4289408f403))