Radical Speed Month  🔗 **Source:** [Radical Speed Month](https://share.snipd.com/episode/7d6bdced-ed32-4490-8d84-2bcd6102cb8a) ## Highlights - **Reframing Matt As Strong Leadership** - Luke reframed Matt Mullenweg's renewed forceful involvement as needed strong leadership for WordPress's future. - He compares that energy to historic tech leaders who made bold, sometimes abrasive decisions to steer major change. Transcript: Luke I have a confession. I have had a change of heart about Matt Mullenweg's involvement in the project. Okay, let's hear it. So I was talking to Nathan Wrigley, WP Tavern podcast, and while I was chatting to him, you know, this topic came up that we talked about last week of is WordPress still relevant? Is it, is it going to be relevant? And I'm, I genuinely have concerns there in 10 years time, even five years time is WordPress part of that conversation. When people ask about what website should I, you know, what should I use to build my website? And I was thinking through what do we need as a project and i realized what we need is we need some strong leadership right now okay we need somebody to come in and make some big calls to steer The ship because sort of status quo it was working, it was fine, and it was comfortable. It was very comfortable. But things are changing. And, you know, I'm not, we talked about this last week, too, I'm not all in on the AI conversation, I still want to hedge a little bit more than most people in tech circles seem to be wanting To hedge. But, you know, I wouldn't bet against AI. And certainly, Matt Mullenweg is not betting against AI. He sort of seems to be all in. It's a direction. I'm not sure I agree with the direction, but it's a direction and it's a strong direction. ([Time 0:00:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6b9af9a-8c31-4c5b-8d14-4b3fd7589171)) - **Try Desktop Mode And Test Multiwindow Editing** - Try Desktop Mode as a plugin because it layers a GUI manager on top of the admin and enables full-screen, app-like workflows. - Jonathan recommends experimenting by opening multiple windows and editing posts side-by-side to test fit. Transcript: Jonathan I don't I don't feel like I'll frame it well, but basically a month to go like do stuff. Right. Right. Right. That was sort of the pretext to this. You sent me this link the other day without much explanation and a reference to go to minute 118. And I'm like, OK, so I did so. And then I had a holy smokes moment as I watched the video. I loved it so much. It was this like WordPress desktop mode where you put it full screen and it takes over and it's suddenly you're in a WordPress operating system. And I pulled up multiple windows because the first thing I was like, well, does it actually work this way? Can I pull up like two posts and see them side by side? And it did. And I only scratched the surface, but I loved it. ([Time 0:04:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/987e6521-efd7-4292-8311-3bf3db10d085)) - **Holy Smokes Moment With Desktop Mode** - Jonathan describes his “holy smokes” moment watching the WordPress Desktop Mode demo that felt like WordPress becoming an OS. - He tested multi-window post editing and found it worked, sparking excitement about new workflows. Transcript: Jonathan I loved it so much. It was this like WordPress desktop mode where you put it full screen and it takes over and it's suddenly you're in a WordPress operating system. And I pulled up multiple windows because the first thing I was like, well, does it actually work this way? Can I pull up like two posts and see them side by side? And it did. And I only scratched the surface, but I loved it. ([Time 0:04:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/167db456-3d4b-4d3a-b413-f8b12922d9a2)) - **Use Playgrounds To Prototype WordPress Experiments** - Explore WordPress as a browser 'playground' to prototype integrations like AI and static site workflows. - Luke and Jonathan stress using playgrounds to test interactions between desktop mode, static output, and new collaborative features. Transcript: Luke Such a crazy idea. Jonathan Is that like a backhanded compliment or that's not even a compliment? Okay. Luke You're good at abstracting concepts, Jonathan. You're excellent. So this was that idea manifest. Jonathan Yeah. Well, and it's so I feel like i'm only scratching the surface of of this right now but it feels connected to this idea of like playground and wordpress in the browser and and for me again It's not it's not the technology itself that's as impressive as the like bringing it to the broader ecosystem and what that means, right? Like, the next, I imagine a conversation not too far in the future where we could be talking ([Time 0:05:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e35a5de7-969d-40b2-aed3-fee456bf2790)) - **Using WordPress As An Authoring Engine For Static Sites** - Jonathan is moving his site to a static renderer but wants WordPress to remain his writing interface, using Desktop Mode as the authoring environment. - He plans to write in WordPress and have a static site render and serve the posts via reverse proxy. Transcript: Jonathan I like it. I like the design. It's been a lot of fun and I've been able to incorporate some new things into it. It's been fun. I want to bring WordPress back in. And it's a full circle of like where I started almost 20 years ago, like writing how to integrate WordPress, right? Yeah. And what I want to do now is like let WordPress continue to be where I write my blog posts. But I want to play with doing so within this desktop mode where it's like my static site's over here, rendering it, doing the things I want. ([Time 0:07:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/613f403a-9d67-433b-ba34-4bc20dd981af)) - **Presence API Brings Sitewide Awareness** - The Presence API exposes who is currently logged into the WordPress admin across pages, not just inside a post. - Luke highlights clicking through to see what someone is editing, improving collaboration awareness site-wide. Transcript: Luke Okay, so first of all, the meta of this is that it's coming from Joe, I think it's pronounced Fusco, who is a full-time contributor sponsored by WP Engine. And at the moment... Wait, are they allowed to contribute? Yeah, of course. Yeah, Weston's been doing amazing things. He's one of the most active people on Slack, I reckon. And WordPress at the moment, you know, we're getting all of these new collaborative editing features. And one of the problems that we've been trying to tackle is multiple people online at the same time. How do we do that? How do we know where they are? And it works really nicely inside of a post. What this presence API does is it brings awareness to who's currently logged into your WordPress site for every page on WordPress. I was really hoping or the, yeah, every page on the admin or sorry, you're right on the admin. So can go and see a list of online users and click through to whatever they're editing at the moment. ([Time 0:08:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3f8aa0f1-20c4-4c70-8400-16e9569ff423)) - **Perception And Technical Limits Of WordPress Stack** - Joost van de Valk argued WordPress's underlying stack feels dated for high-scale performance and developer appeal. - Luke concedes DB schemas and PHP's image problem can hinder plugin performance and recruiting talent. Transcript: Luke You know, like I've just been experimenting with some awesome stuff with integrating playgrounds and tests with AI. And then I'm seeing this desktop mode. I'm seeing this, you know, all these new features in WordPress 7. And I'm seeing all this cool stuff with the presence API, and then Joost comes to throw some cold water, and he starts to talk about how the problem with WordPress is that the underlying Technology is kind of out of date and difficult. And he's not wrong. Like, if you want your plugin perform really well at scale, then WordPress's default database tables aren't really going to do the job. Fair enough. And, you know, like there's, it's a PHP stack. That's not like, I don't know, it's not sexy for developers in the way that other frameworks are. ([Time 0:09:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/61e95cfd-c70e-40c7-bc7e-d631a3a2d784)) - **Meta Janitors Channel Experiment On WordPress.org** - Luke recounts a Meta Janitors channel Matt opened where trusted contributors were told to make changes on WordPress.org without asking. - The channel saw rapid activity, then activity tapered after discovery and the channel appeared to become more private. Transcript: Luke There is a new channel called Meta Janitors, and it had a bunch of activity for a week or so where Matt invited a few people, I don't know, maybe a dozen, and said, hey, these are people I Know and trust. Feel free, just go at it on WordPress.org. You can change things. You can update things. Don't ask for permission and use AI and get in there. And so a few people did. And there was some like a lot of really fast change and a lot of communication in that channel. Now, did the right thing and he made that channel open interesting so okay he just didn't tell anybody about it but it was discovered and i joined and right at about the time oh maybe like A few days after i joined suddenly all the activity in the channel seems to have come to a did you do, Luke? I didn't do anything, but I think a few people found out about it. People started looking at it and watching it, even just not even joining the channel. I reckon there's a lot of people that are just sort of observing. And then I don't know. ([Time 0:12:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/faf94311-324a-401d-905f-dde64cbf5b8a))