


<p>And I think we've kind of lost that along the way a little bit. We've kind of focused so much on the more advanced topics. And then of course, the pandemic, you know, took away a, a lot of the in person events. So I, I think, you know, the word camps are one way to really start showing, you know, new users what's possible and you know, how to, to do the basics.</p>



<p>Um, you know, I, I would, I honestly, I would love to see that at Word Camp us or one of the really. International events, you know, have a track just for new people, uh, you know, where they can ask experts questions, you know, that people that, you know, we, we see in the post status slack or we see on online all the time.</p>



<p>You know, if, if a new user's able to ask them questions that, you know, that can go a long way towards selling them on the platform and keeping them there. Um, and you mentioned the learn [00:36:00] tool. Well, I, I think that's fantastic. That's actually something I brought up on the, uh, on the slack the other day. You know, Has there been any effort to kind of integrate that with the core software so that you can easily find tutorials?</p>



<p>Uh, maybe through a plugin or, or something like that? Because we have various WordPress support, uh, tools that are third party, you know, that'll show videos on how to do different things. We have this wonderful resource and if somebody doesn't visit wordpress.org, they're really not gonna know it's. And I think, you know, it's such an opportunity to reach people and, and teach them how to do anything from the basics to, you know, once they level up to, you know, some more advanced things, it's all right there waiting and, you know, all we have to do in some way, some respects is, you know, put it in front of them, You know, give them the opportunity to see it.</p>



<p>Um, so those are things, you know. The WordPress community has so much great content, so many smart people. I think we [00:37:00] ought to be able to put our heads together and, and find ways to, you know, encourage new users and embrace them and, and, and, you know, kind of help them, you know, with any stumbling blocks.</p>



<p>And because, you know, if once we kind of. Hate to say the phrase die out. You know, what, what, what is the next generation of WordPress user going to look like? How, how are they going to use the software? You know, if we want to keep it as a market leader, we want to keep it, uh, viable, you know, the new users are, you know, just critical</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> to that, right?</p>



<p>Yeah. I, I think that Learn is, uh, learn. WordPress is. Logical, the content that's being developed there and also the meetups that are going on, the, um, kind of webinars that are, that are happening are, um, are logical to move into the dashboard for certain, um, certain use [00:38:00] cases, um, in the, in mass market, DIY users.</p>



<p>All right, well, It's been good talking to you again. I, I think this, this is a good, a good topic with a lot of questions in it that touch a couple of the main, main conversations and, and issues today that we've, we've been all, all thinking about, um, what to do with, uh, potential changes to the plugin repository and, and the kind of data that that comes out of there.</p>



<p>Dot org content and information can somehow fit into the, um, into the WordPress dashboard and, um, interface there to help people and connect them with the community. Um, how we could maybe standardize, uh, the experience and some interface design, how things are, are done on the back end that, um, makes [00:39:00] it a more palatable and, uh, Less busy interruptive, um, or confused experience on, on sites with a lot of things installed, whether it's, um, someone just setting up their own, their own site, or, uh, an agency doing it for a, a high end client.</p>



<p>Um, I think the more, the more we see those all as, uh, common problems everyone has. The better chance at br at bringing everyone towards a, an aligned solution where everyone wins. Um, ideally one, one would hope .</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karcovack:</strong> There's potential there. Absolutely. Hope so. Um, you know, The, the, you know, if you start the conversation, hopefully, um, you know, you bring in some good ideas and if we see a few of them implemented, uh, that's like you said, that's gonna benefit everybody.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> You have been listening to post status excerpt, a podcast from post Status, the [00:40:00] community for WordPress professionals. Check us out@poststatus.com. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, or become a member and join us in post status. We have membership plans for freelancers, agency owners, product founders, and business partners who share and support our mission of investing in the open web by growing the WordPress ecosystem and coming together for fun and networking as we give and grow together.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:52:49 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Dan Knauss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 14.4 Introduces Distraction-Free Mode, Redesigns Pattern Inserter";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138957";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-14-4-introduces-distraction-free-mode-redesigns-pattern-inserter";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3067:"<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/27/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-4-26-october/">Gutenberg 14.4</a> was released today with long-awaited support for distraction-free editing, to the delight of content editors around the world. It hides all non-essential UI and clears the canvas for a focus on text-based content creation. </p>



<p>The mode can be toggled on in the options menu in the top toolbar. Distraction-free mode hides the top toolbar, any open sidebars, along with the insertion point indicator and the block toolbar.</p>



source: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/27/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-4-26-october/">Gutenberg 14.4 release post</a>



<p>The project to improve the editing experience for text-based content began with <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-begin-early-exploration-of-a-new-distraction-free-mode">early explorations</a> in February, which <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-make-progress-on-distraction-free-mode">progressed</a> into a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/41740">PR</a> that contributors have been refining for the last few months. This distraction-free mode is a monumental improvement over the days when users struggled to write with various UI elements popping in and out of view.</p>



<p>Another major update in 14.4 is the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44028">redesigned pattern inserter</a>. It has been updated to show the categories before rendering the patterns, giving users a more fluid visual preview as they browse the pattern library. Patterns can be dragged and dropped from the preview pane into the canvas.</p>



source: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/27/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-4-26-october/">Gutenberg 14.4 release post</a>



<p>Other notable improvements users may notice include the following:</p>



<ul>
<li>Image Block: new toolbar button to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44965">add a caption</a></li>



<li>Block Locking: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44739">Added content locking to the navigation block</a></li>



<li>Many improvements to fluid typography, including <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44765">automatically converting custom font sizes to fluid values</a> when “settings.typography.fluid” is set to true</li>



<li>Inserter: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44711">Add a more pronounced hover effect</a></li>
</ul>



<p>Performance benchmarks show an improvement in loading time for both the post and site editors. Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/27/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-4-26-october/">release post</a> to see the full list of all the changes and bug fixes included in 14.4. This release will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release next week, but users who are eager to adopt these new features can get them right now in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/">Gutenberg plugin</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:48:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 10.5.0 Maintenance Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=326831";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://buddypress.org/2022/10/buddypress-10-5-0-maintenance-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1298:"<p>Immediately available is&nbsp;<a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.10.5.0.zip">BuddyPress 10.5.0</a>. This maintenance release fixes five bugs and makes sure BuddyPress is ready for WordPress 6.1 latest improvements about Block-Template themes. Just like we&#8217;ve done testing BuddyPress into <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/27/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-4-rc4-now-available-for-testing/">WP 6.1 RC4</a>, we strongly encourage all Plugin developers to do the same and update their &#8220;Tested up to: 6.1&#8221; plugin main files header.</p>



<p>For details on all changes, please read the&nbsp;<a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-10-5-0/">10.5.0 release notes</a>.</p>



<p>Update to BuddyPress 10.5.0 today in your WordPress Dashboard, or by&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">downloading it from the WordPress.org plugin repository</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<h2>Many thanks to 10.5.0 contributors&nbsp;<span class="dashicons dashicons-heart"></span></h2>



<p>&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dcavins/">David Cavins</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sjregan/">sjregan</a>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/">imath</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 27 Oct 2022 21:30:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"Do The Woo Community: Building WooCommerce Community in Africa with Sunday Ukafia";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=73309";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://dothewoo.io/building-woocommerce-community-in-africa-with-sunday-ukafia/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:437:"<p>Listen in as we hear the passion that Sunday has for bringing WooCommerce to Nigeria and the broader community in Africa.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/building-woocommerce-community-in-africa-with-sunday-ukafia/">Building WooCommerce Community in Africa with Sunday Ukafia</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 27 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"WPTavern: 2022 Web Almanac Performance Data Shows WordPress Sites May Be Overusing Lazy-Loading";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138932";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"https://wptavern.com/2022-web-almanac-performance-data-shows-wordpress-sites-may-be-overusing-lazy-loading";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6567:"<p>The last two chapters of the <a href="https://almanac.httparchive.org/">2022 Web Almanac</a> were released this week &#8211; Structured Data and Performance, completing the 729-page ebook of the report. The WordPress-specific chapter was published earlier this month with metrics that indicate <a href="https://wptavern.com/2022-web-almanac-report-finds-wordpress-adoption-is-growing-adds-new-page-builder-data">adoption is growing</a>.</p>



<p>The Performance chapter was written by Etsy performance engineer Melissa Ada and Google web transparency engineer Rick Viscomi. Performance metrics in the chapter focus on <a href="https://web.dev/vitals/">Core Web Vitals</a> (CWV), which Google introduced in 2020 and <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience">made a ranking signal</a> in 2021. They used the public <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/">Chrome UX Report</a> (CrUX) dataset for the report, which collects data from <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/methodology/#eligibility">eligible websites</a> &#8211; publicly discoverable sites with an undisclosed minimum number of visitors.</p>



<p>Most of the data concerns the performance of the web as a whole over time, but the 2022 Web Almanac highlighted one specific concern regarding WordPress sites&#8217; use of lazy-loading and its impact on LCP performance. Google defines <a href="https://web.dev/lcp/">Largest Contentful Paint metric (LCP)</a> metrics as “the render time of the largest <a href="https://web.dev/lcp/#what-elements-are-considered">image or text block</a> visible within the viewport, relative to when the page <a href="https://w3c.github.io/hr-time/#timeorigin-attribute">first started loading</a>.”</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Lazy-loading is a good thing when used correctly, but these stats strongly suggest that there’s a major opportunity to improve performance by removing this functionality from LCP images in particular.</p>



<p>WordPress was one of the pioneers of native lazy-loading adoption, and between versions 5.5 and 5.9, it didn’t actually omit the attribute from LCP candidates. So let’s explore the extent to which WordPress is still contributing to this anti-pattern.</p>



<p>According to the <a href="https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2022/cms">CMS</a> chapter, <a href="https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2022/cms#most-popular-cmss">WordPress is used by 35% of pages</a>. So it’s surprising to see that 72% of pages that use native lazy-loading on their LCP image are using WordPress, given that a fix has been available since January 2022 in version 5.9. One theory that needs more investigation is that plugins may be circumventing the safeguards built into WordPress core by injecting LCP images onto the page with the lazy-loading behavior.</p>



<p>Similarly, a disproportionately high percentage of pages that use custom lazy-loading are built with WordPress at 54%. This hints at a wider issue in the WordPress ecosystem about lazy-loading overuse. Rather than being a fixable bug localized to WordPress core, there may be hundreds or thousands of separate themes and plugins contributing to this anti-pattern.</p>
<cite><a href="https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2022/performance">2022 Web Almanac &#8211; Chapter 12: Performance</a></cite></blockquote>



<p>Prior to WordPress 5.9, WordPress’ default of lazy loading implementation was causing slower LCP performance, because it had been applied too aggressively and was lazy-loading images above the fold. In 5.9, <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-9-to-fix-lazy-loading-performance-regression-resulting-in-30-faster-page-loads-in-some-cases">WordPress shipped a fix</a> that more eagerly loads images within the initial viewport while lazy-loading the rest. That&#8217;s why results that show WordPress sites overusing lazy-loading are surprising.</p>



<p>&#8220;Admittedly, &#8216;lazy-overloading&#8217; a hard problem to solve,&#8221; Viscomi said in his <a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1585248419701874688">Twitter thread analysis</a>. &#8220;We don&#8217;t always know whether an image will be the LCP.  WordPress core sets it on every image by default and uses heuristics to unset it. Nearly 3/4 of pages that natively lazy-load images are on WordPress.&#8221;</p>



<p>In 2020, Viscomi remarked on how quickly the adoption of native image lazy-loading shot up after WordPress 5.5 was released in August of that year with  images lazy-loaded by default. WordPress has been driving adoption of this feature, which is why any implementation &#8220;anti-pattern,&#8221; as Viscomi characterized it, has an outsized effect on the performance of the web.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">As of October, 10.6% of the web is using native image lazy loading, per <a href="https://twitter.com/HTTPArchive?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HTTPArchive</a>. That number was 1.5% in July! <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f92f.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />This appears to be _entirely_ driven by WordPress at 28.9% of WP pages, which makes up one third of the web.<a href="https://t.co/QYGyyctFgc">https://t.co/QYGyyctFgc</a><br /><br />left: all web<br />right: WP <a href="https://t.co/RQnDw4UZ56">pic.twitter.com/RQnDw4UZ56</a></p>&mdash; Rick Viscomi (@rick_viscomi) <a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1344380340153016321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2020</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>&#8220;What gives, WordPress?&#8221; Viscomi said. &#8220;My theory is that it&#8217;s not the core heuristics that are wrong, it&#8217;s the plugins. Also, keep in mind that the majority of pages that even use lazy-loading are WP.</p>



<p>&#8220;To support the plugin theory, let&#8217;s look at custom lazy-loading of LCP: More than half of the pages that do it are built with WordPress. WordPress is &#8216;only&#8217; a third of the web, so there&#8217;s clearly something going on with JS-based lazy-overloading in WP.&#8221;</p>



<p>On WordPress.org there are <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/lazy+loading/">multiple pages</a> of performance, caching, and image and video optimization plugins that are using lazy-loading in some way. Plugin and theme developers who are using lazy-loading in their extensions may want to test their implementations to see if they are having a negative impact on LCP performance.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 27 Oct 2022 03:04:22 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"WPTavern: #48 – Christina Deemer on Making Digital Content Usable for People With Cognitive Disabilities";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=138814";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:120:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/48-christina-deemer-on-making-digital-content-usable-for-people-with-cognitive-disabilities";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42987:"Transcript<div>
<p>Christina Deemer</p>



<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the show, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you all your idea featured soon. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So, on the podcast today, we have Christina Deemer. Christina is a senior UX developer at Lede, a company of the Alley Group, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. She&#8217;s passionate about inclusivity and community and has spoken at a variety of events about the subject.</p>



<p>Christina is autistic and brings her personal experience with neurodivergence and disability to bear in her work.</p>



<p>At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a presentation called &#8220;embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities&#8221;. And it&#8217;s this talk, which is the foundation of the podcast today.</p>



<p>In her description of the presentation, Christina wrote, &#8220;cognitive disabilities are among the most prevalent types of disabilities, yet experts have struggled to provide web accessibility best practices around this area due to cognitive disabilities being such a broad category. However recent work by standards groups has begun to address this deficiency&#8221;.</p>



<p>In past episodes, we&#8217;ve covered website accessibility from some different angles, and today we focus on how the web might be experienced by people with cognitive disabilities.</p>



<p>First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually means, and what it encompasses. It&#8217;s a wide range of things, and so we talk about how people may differ in the way that they access the web. Memory, over complicated interfaces and readability are a few of the areas that we touch upon.</p>



<p>We also discuss what legislation there is in place to offer guidance to those wishing to make their sites more accessible, and as you&#8217;ll hear, it&#8217;s a changing landscape.</p>



<p>Towards the end, Christina talks about her own late diagnosis of autism and how this shapes her experience of the web, particularly with auto-play content and when web design includes elements which flash or flicker.</p>



<p>Typically when we record the podcast there&#8217;s not a lot of background noise, but that&#8217;s not always the case. This is the last of the live recordings from WordCamp US 2022, and you may notice that the recordings have a little echo or other strange audio artifacts. Whilst the podcasts are more than listenable, I do hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links and the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all of the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so, without further I bring you Christina Deemer.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Christina Deemer. Hello.</p>



<p>[00:04:14] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Hello Nathan.</p>



<p>[00:04:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s very nice to have you on. We are at WordCamp US 2022. We&#8217;re upstairs in the media room, and we&#8217;ve got Christina on the show today because she did a presentation. Have you actually done the presentation yet?</p>



<p>[00:04:27] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yes, I did it yesterday morning. I was lucky in that I got to get it over with early and then enjoy the rest of the conference.</p>



<p>[00:04:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How did it go?</p>



<p>[00:04:35] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> It went really well. It was a lot of fun. I had a really great audience.</p>



<p>[00:04:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s nice to hear. That&#8217;s good. The subject, I&#8217;m just gonna give everybody the title. That&#8217;s probably a quick way to introduce what we&#8217;re gonna talk about. The subject title was embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities. So we&#8217;ll dive into that in a moment. Just before then, though, just paint a little bit of a picture about who you are and how come it is that you&#8217;re speaking at a WordPress conference particularly about this topic.</p>



<p>[00:05:04] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Okay. I am a career changer. I spent the first 12 years or so of my career working in arts management. Then I decided I wanted to do something very different, and I became a developer. And one of my early mentors introduced me to WordPress. So, the first projects that I worked on were WordPress sites. I wrote my first WordPress theme when I was 35, and just really enjoyed getting involved in the WordPress community.</p>



<p>And from the beginning of my career, I&#8217;ve been very interested in accessibility for a wide variety of reasons. And it&#8217;s become a passion of mine. I really enjoy sharing knowledge about accessibility with people. I enjoy hearing people&#8217;s stories about accessibility. And recently there&#8217;s been a lot of work done on the standards around cognitive accessibility or accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities, and that work has been really fascinating and I&#8217;ve wanted to share it with people. And that was how, the reason that I pitched this talk for WordCamp US.</p>



<p>[00:06:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. That&#8217;s great. The words cognitive disabilities, it probably makes a great deal of sense to you because you&#8217;ve parsed and you&#8217;ve said it many times. You fully understand it. Would you just run over a brief definition of what it encompasses? And I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s not just one thing, maybe it&#8217;s a multitude of things.</p>



<p>[00:06:28] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> So it&#8217;s a very nebulous term, and it acts as a sort of umbrella for neurological disorders as well as behavioral and mental health disorders that may or may not be neurological. It covers a wide variety of things from autism, ADHD, aphasia, dementia, dyslexia, dyscalculia, tourette syndrome, traumatic brain injury.</p>



<p>It covers a real wide variety of things, which is one of the reasons actually why it&#8217;s taken so long to develop some standards around how to make websites more accessible to people with those diagnoses. But just to take a little further step back with things. When I talk about this I really try to make a point to not focus on some of these sort of diagnostic labels, but to rather focus on underlying cognitive skills.</p>



<p>Because a lot of people with cognitive disabilities don&#8217;t even realize they have a disability, for a number of reasons. There are a lot of systemic barriers to getting a diagnosis, and a lot of things come into play there. But really what we&#8217;re talking about is some underlying cognitive skills, like memory issues, focus issues, ability to concentrate, reading, math and language comprehension, decision making, executive function, which has to do with the processes involved in following instructions and planning things and processing a bunch of things at once.</p>



<p>So, when I talk about cognitive accessibility, I really like to focus less on those diagnostic labels and more on the underlying cognitive skills that are involved.</p>



<p>[00:08:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So from that, I take it that cognitive disabilities, as you described it, was a long list. There was a really large amount of things that you&#8217;re covering here, which is really interesting. So let&#8217;s unpack that a little bit. Just before we clicked record, I mentioned that we may get into the weeds of what it is like for people who have some of these things. And maybe we could cherry pick some examples.</p>



<p>What I&#8217;m intending to do here is for you to paint a picture of what the web looks like for some of these different things. So in my case, when I approach the computer and open it up and get it started, I can see the screen, I can hear the video when it&#8217;s played. I just don&#8217;t really have a window into what that might look like. So if you have a moment to just broadly paint a picture of what some of these things feel like and look like.</p>



<p>[00:09:01] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Sure, and even people who are somewhat familiar with general accessibility and maybe more accustomed to thinking about what the web is like for people who use screen readers. So they think about, they&#8217;ve maybe done some testing and they know how things are read. They think about reading order, and how a screen reader works. And when they&#8217;re thinking about making sites accessible for people who are deaf, they are thinking about making sure that there are captions on videos.</p>



<p>So when we&#8217;re thinking about cognitive accessibility, we&#8217;re thinking about some other issues. So in my talk yesterday, I had a couple of examples of sites that are pages that had weak cognitive accessibility. And one of them was a desktop screen of an interface of eBay, like buying a shirt on eBay. And in the middle of the page, there were four calls to action, with three different designs. So it wasn&#8217;t clear what the user was supposed to push. There was no clear call to action. There was very little white space on the page.</p>



<p>So this isn&#8217;t great for users with cognitive disability. Somebody who has an issue with focus is not going to know really where to look on the page. Could get distracted by all of the various details. All of the sidebars on the left, little small text below an image. People who struggle with decision making haven&#8217;t helped them with those four CTAs in the middle of the page.</p>



<p>Anybody with memory issues, it&#8217;s not going to be clear, like, if they bought something on eBay previously. They won&#8217;t remember what they did last time because it&#8217;s a little confusing. So a lot of users may abandon their task on a page like that. So that&#8217;s an example of a page that maybe has complex or overwhelming interface.</p>



<p>And another barrier that users face is if a site has very complex text or unusual words. So I mention Wikipedia page on the planet Saturn, that included words like perihelion, and a word like eccentricity, but people may not be accustomed to understanding what Saturn&#8217;s eccentricity is. Like, what does that even mean?</p>



<p>So, readability is often analyzed through a, a system called the Flesh Reading E Score. And I went to a website that measures the readability of, particularly of, Wikipedia pages. And it indicated that this page had a reading level of 10 to 12th grade. So it was very, very difficult to read. And for most adults we say that the reading level of content should be at about a seventh or eighth grade level. So if you want to make your content accessible for people who have reading or language comprehension issues, you&#8217;re going to want to go with even simpler content. A readability of about sixth grade or less. So those are of a couple of examples of some barriers that users with cognitive disabilities face on the web.</p>



<p>[00:11:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the accessibility piece, the bit that you mentioned earlier, about potentially some of the WCAG guidelines and things like that. That now is being drawn into the domain of, it&#8217;s illegal if you don&#8217;t perform some of these things. Is there anything surrounding that with the cognitive disability side. Is there any mandated things that you must do?</p>



<p>[00:12:17] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Okay, so that&#8217;s where things are evolving, a lot and some really interesting things are happening. In WCAG 2.1, there&#8217;s already a couple of things, a couple of success criteria that address cognitive accessibility. Things around space around text, stuff like that. Auto filling in or making it possible to auto complete form fields. Those things are great for people with language or reading comprehension issues, people who have issues with focus.</p>



<p>In April, 2021, the W3C came out with a working group note on guidelines for making content more usable for people with cognitive disabilities. And this was a non-normative document, which meant that it was supplementary to WCAG and you don&#8217;t need to conform, follow these guidelines in order to meet WCAG compliance. So they came out with all of these really great framework, with eight objectives, dozens of design patterns, and none of that is necessary to comply with WCAG. So, yeah, that was April 2021.</p>



<p>So now we&#8217;re in September 2022. We now have WCAG 2.2 is in candidate recommendation, I think. And there are two new success criteria that feel like they&#8217;ve come directly out of that working group note. One is on accessible authentication, which is where you need to supply at least one method for logging in that doesn&#8217;t rely on cognitive skills. So you need to have at least one option where somebody doesn&#8217;t have to, by memory, type in their password. They can use a password manager or there&#8217;s an option for magic links, QR codes, single sign on, something like that. So that&#8217;s a new one.</p>



<p>And there&#8217;s also a new success criteria on consistent help. Oftentimes the quickest way for somebody to solve a challenge online is to get help from a real person that can support users. And it&#8217;s important that this information on like how to get help from a real person isn&#8217;t hidden. You don&#8217;t have to scroll and click through a bunch of non obvious links to find out how to get help from a real person. That information is accessible in the same place on consistent pages. And that&#8217;s just even having an email address for help, or a number to get help via text, or social, or a chatbot or something that&#8217;s not a chat, that&#8217;s a real person or something. Just making it possible for somebody to get help from a real person</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re seeing some of these things that were in that working group note come into the standard, which is very exciting. And part of the reason there were all of these design patterns in the working group note in the April, 2021 working group note, that are not included in the standard, in 2.2. And I think that&#8217;s for a variety of reasons. Like one of them is that so much of it is it&#8217;s hard to figure out a way to test it. To like design it so that you can have some sort of measurable test of yes, you are conforming with this or you aren&#8217;t.</p>



<p>A lot of it, with cognitive disabilities is very contextual and subjective, and it depends on your product and it depends on so many different things that they haven&#8217;t figured out a way to create testable success criteria yet. But it&#8217;s exciting to me that we at . Least have these two new success criteria.</p>



<p>[00:15:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is one of the things that makes this difficult to pin down, is it because unlike, let&#8217;s take the example of somebody who is blind, it&#8217;s binary in that case. I don&#8217;t mean you, your heart of sight, I mean you are literally blind. You know what to do with that because the outcome is obvious. You can&#8217;t see the screen. So there&#8217;s remedies for that, and you can create those remedies with screen readers and so on. But it sounds like the description of cognitive disabilities, there&#8217;s such a broad spectrum. It&#8217;s hard to pin it down, so it&#8217;s hard to create the solution because each person may be slightly different.</p>



<p>[00:16:15] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Absolutely. And there&#8217;s a saying in the autism community that when you&#8217;ve met one autistic person, you&#8217;ve met one autistic person. So a lot of times with these things, you can have an interface that works for one person who has a lot of trouble with memory, may not work for another person. Or even that same person when they&#8217;re having a good day versus having a bad day.</p>



<p>So, it is very hard to pin down. It comes down then not to an argument about we have to do this to legally comply with the standard, to not get into trouble. It comes down to, you have to do this or you should do this because you want to do the right thing for your users. And sometimes, I talk about this in my talk, that there can be sometimes tension between like business goals and accessibility goals or something like that.</p>



<p>And there are a lot of ways to find the like win . Win. You know we&#8217;re improving things for users, for disabled users also improves things for your business goals. But you really have to get out of more of a checklist, we&#8217;re doing this because it&#8217;s legal, because we need to legally comply with the standard, to like having a more accessibility mindset about it all.</p>



<p>[00:17:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that makes sense. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;re American, but we&#8217;re in America. I&#8217;m from the UK. So, completely different sides of the world really. And obviously you take in every other country on the planet, there&#8217;s gonna be a different complexion there. Is there broad consensus of how important it is across the world? Or is it very much a case that America&#8217;s doing one thing and the UK is doing another, and Australia and all the other countries that we could mention.</p>



<p>[00:17:47] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> I can speak more about that in terms of accessibility in general. So there are different laws in different places, which sounds like a really obvious thing when I say it that way. But what&#8217;s really great about WCAG is that it is a sort of internationally recognized standard, and a lot of countries use WCAG as a standard, and they&#8217;ll refer to it because it is kept up to date, because it is all testable.</p>



<p>So there are like slightly different laws in different places, but a lot of places do fall back to WCAG, usually the double A standard. Depends on the places and everything, but a lot of times a law may apply only to like government websites, or sites that serve the public interest or something like that.</p>



<p>And I think there&#8217;s still a lot of debate around whether or not websites fall under the Americans with Disability Act. There&#8217;s still some argument about that. I mentored a developer out of the UK on accessibility at the end of 2021, in the beginning of 2022, and we talked a little bit about some of the laws there and they&#8217;re, yeah, slightly different than they are in America, but everything falls back to WCAG.</p>



<p>[00:19:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. Thank you. You mentioned in the notes that we exchanged prior to recording this, that there are some, some ways that you can make this job easier for yourself. And you talk particularly about some design patterns that you feel will be able to assist people who, perhaps having listened to this podcast, think, okay, this is something I need to be mindful of. Just run us through what these design patterns are. That may take a long time, I don&#8217;t know. You might have a quick version or it may be a long version. I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>[00:19:25] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yeah, in the April 2021 working group note, it mentions dozens of different design patterns. And um, I really encourage people to check that out. Of course, read this spec and look at the working group node and understand all of the different things. But a couple of sort of top things for me are making your content as clear as possible. And a lot of times people think of content as post content.</p>



<p>But content is everything that&#8217;s on your site. So it includes button text, it includes how the content in a menu, it includes instructions, it includes headings, and it&#8217;s important that all of that is as clear as possible. So if you have multiple CTAs on a page, if you have a CTA for subscribing, what does subscribing mean? What are you subscribing to? Versus registering for a newsletter. You need to make sure that the CTA for registering for the newsletter, versus subscribing to a publication, that they have a separate CTA. That it&#8217;s clear that you&#8217;re doing two different actions here.</p>



<p>And we talked about readability a minute ago, making sure that you&#8217;re using short sentences with simple common words. That is helpful. And that you&#8217;re using punctuation intentionally, which sounds like a small thing but using punctuation intentionally, like a period when you mean to use a period and using commas. That&#8217;s helpful for, clear content is important for SEO as well. And it helps with users who use screen readers, which includes people with cognitive disabilities who are more comfortable hearing the text, the content, than reading it.</p>



<p>And while a blind person who does not have a cognitive disability may be able to work out the meaning of something that&#8217;s not formatted correctly. Somebody who has communication issues may not be able to work out what the meaning of the content is, if it&#8217;s not formatted correctly. So the clear content is one. Using clear step by step instructions for something is important. A lot of times we give users feedback only when they&#8217;re making a mistake.</p>



<p>But it&#8217;s important to give them a little help before they&#8217;ve made a mistake in a form. Give them an example of how you want a telephone number formatted. Or like where they can find if a username is actually a user&#8217;s email address, make that clear to the user before they&#8217;ve tried to submit the form and they&#8217;ve made a mistake. Those little bits of instructions sometimes can seem unnecessary or they&#8217;re cluttering up the site. If you feel like they&#8217;re cluttering up the site, you can hide the instructions round like a little eye icon or something like that.</p>



<p>One of the things that I think is particularly important is not making the user have to remember. If a user wants to upgrade their subscription or change their service plan. They should know what their current plan is, how much it costs, when it is set to expire. They shouldn&#8217;t have to remember that when they&#8217;re being asked to upgrade to another plan. So that&#8217;s another one.</p>



<p>And you see that with a number of cases where, you are asked to upgrade and you&#8217;re like what plan am I even on right now? Am I on a particularly high plan? How much money am I, how much extra am I spending to upgrade my plan? And it can be confusing to users. So like, just give them everything that they need on every single screen. That&#8217;s a lot better for them.</p>



<p>So those are some more concrete things. And then there are some more sort of conceptual design patterns around things like making sure that a user&#8217;s most important tasks are featured prominently on a site. What are a user&#8217;s most important tasks? Do you even know what a user&#8217;s most important tasks are on your site?</p>



<p>The example I give in my talk is that, you know if you have a library and the team thinks that the most important thing is getting users to sign up for an event, and it takes two clicks for the users to sign up for the event at the library. But, if you look at the usage data, or focus groups, or user testing, like a user&#8217;s most important tasks may be figuring out what the library hours are. Signing up for a library card. But maybe to do that you have to click on a bunch of different links and maybe even have to search or something to find out what the library hours are.</p>



<p>So you may have to sort of reconcile what the user&#8217;s most important tasks are versus what the team considers the most important. But that&#8217;s only possible when you actually know what your users want to do.</p>



<p>[00:23:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It feels like there&#8217;s a whole subset, and I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m not saying that this is the norm, but I think there&#8217;s a subset of people out there who quite deliberately go out of their way to make things as confusing as possible. So an example that just comes to mind recently is I purchased a flight, and the process of completing the flight purchase was extraordinarily challenging. In that I couldn&#8217;t get to the end of it without declining hundreds of different things. I simply wanted a flight, but then came the insurance and the, do you want the hotel at the other end? And do you want the car and all of this? I was just completely overloaded by the whole thing. Getting really frustrated.</p>



<p>[00:24:37] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:24:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And I thought, but this is intentional. This has been designed to, in a sense, trip me up. Because the button that I wanted to press, which was continue.</p>



<p>[00:24:47] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:24:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Was masked, and the button which was going to sell me the insurance was large and colorful and obvious. And I feel that there&#8217;s a sort of subset of the internet where they&#8217;re trying to do exactly the opposite of what you&#8217;re describing, because, maybe it&#8217;s profit, maybe that&#8217;s all it is. It&#8217;s as simple as that. So that must be frustrating, shall we say.</p>



<p>[00:25:05] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yes, a design pattern, an accessible design pattern, is to make critical paths as short as possible. Anything that can be optional, buying the insurance, upgrading your seat, should be something that happens after you&#8217;ve completed the initial purchase. Because it&#8217;s so easy for users to get distracted. It&#8217;s so easy for users to get confused about what button to push. And again there&#8217;s that tension between accessibility needs and business needs. And I really wonder like, I would want to look at the data. Is this really effective for them?</p>



<p>Do they know? Would it be more effective for users if they were allowed to choose whether or not to buy the insurance or upgrade their seat, after they&#8217;ve completed their purchase and feel good about that, and then have the option to like do all of these other things. And then you know that the user isn&#8217;t going to, is less likely to abandon their task, and then they haven&#8217;t even purchased the ticket.</p>



<p>[00:26:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I feel also that the language often is deliberately obfuscating what it is that is intended. So you know you get like double negatives, and if you do not wish to achieve such a thing, tick this box. And actually just have to spend a moment thinking about it. Hang on, what does that even mean? Do I want to tick that box or not? And give it a moment&#8217;s thought and it comes to you. But I guess those trip wires are just really frustrating.</p>



<p>[00:26:25] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yeah. And imagine like a user who struggles with reading comprehension issues, managing a sentence with double negatives. Maybe it&#8217;s hard enough for them to just parse the content in the first place, let alone battle that double negative. And maybe they think they&#8217;ve done the right thing and have said that they don&#8217;t want the insurance, but then they find out that they&#8217;ve actually purchased it.</p>



<p>And then they feel exhausted. They feel embarrassed and frustrated. And maybe reluctant to say anything because they don&#8217;t want to admit that they made a mistake and didn&#8217;t understand the content. It personally makes me feel very frustrated and angry that people maybe intentionally like praying upon people who are disabled. It is, for a lot of people, it may be just a matter of okay, I&#8217;ve gotta take a moment, figure this out. What do I wanna do? And it may just be an inconvenience or a nuisance. But for some people those kinds of barriers, it really can take a toll on people.</p>



<p>[00:27:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, and I feel the flight example, albeit was easy to understand, it&#8217;s not an essential part of my life. But if I was acquiring something which was utterly critical, trying to access healthcare or something and wasn&#8217;t thought through, and I really need to get this form finished yesterday. Those things do matter and so putting the time in to make it as straightforward as possible. It feels like, the word that&#8217;s coming into my head here is, clarity, simplicity, those kind of things. Just keep it as straightforward and as easy to understand as possible.</p>



<p>[00:27:58] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Absolutely.</p>



<p>[00:27:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned that you wanted to talk about in this podcast interview, that you have autism and how this actually impacts you. I don&#8217;t wanna lead you off in any particular direction, so I&#8217;m just gonna ask you if you want to just describe the experience.</p>



<p>[00:28:14] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Sure. So I am late diagnosed autistic person. I was diagnosed in March of 2020. So like right as the pandemic started. It was a turbulent time for me. But I also have, I have multiple family members who are autistic and the more I learned about autism, the more I found myself relating to a lot of the things that were talked about. And things like having trouble reading social cues, having some very rigid routines, getting really involved in some special interests and a number of other things, but those are some top things.</p>



<p>And a sort of funny thing is that people have told me, they&#8217;re like, hey, you don&#8217;t look autistic. And I&#8217;m like, what does that even mean? Does that mean that I&#8217;m not, I don&#8217;t look like the sort of stereotype for an autistic person as a young white boy who likes trains? And granted, trains are awesome, I do like trains. And I do love Star Trek, especially like the autistic coded characters like Spock and Data and Seven Of Nine. But like, autistic people look like people. There are women who are autistic, there are black people who are autistic.</p>



<p>And I think the other thing is that I&#8217;m good at masking, and masking is where autistic people sort of adopt neurotypical traits to fit in. And that is something that a lot of people, especially people who are socialized as girls, get accustomed to doing. So like there&#8217;s that. But I am autistic. Autistic people look a bunch of different ways. I wanted to take advantage of this platform, this opportunity to address that misconception about what autistic people look like.</p>



<p>And earlier we were talking about my experience on the web. What that looks like and how my autism can inform that or what barriers I experience. And a couple of things came to mind, and one is that definitely like any autoplay content, like autoplay media, or auto play video auto play audio, animations that are not functional, it can feel to me like I&#8217;m intending to step into a library and I&#8217;ve, and I walk into a rave. That is how it feels. It feels very loud and bright. And that is no knock on raves, everybody likes a good rave sometimes. But you wanna give people the opportunity to like turn off the music, and turn off the flashing lights.</p>



<p>So a thing that I really hope people can do is, if you have some auto play thing. A, don&#8217;t auto play anything in the first place, it&#8217;s very inaccessible, but like always give users the opportunity to personalize, and turn those things off.</p>



<p>So the other one is like very similar in that it&#8217;s flashing and flickering content. And that can feel like looking at the sun. I can feel pain in my eyes, from flashing and flickering content. And it doesn&#8217;t have to be that super fast flash that can trigger seizures in photosensitive people. It can just be like, a little too much flash. I can feel it in my eyes and I can have even that like startled physical reaction to it. And that&#8217;s just me personally.</p>



<p>I think there are a lot of other people who may have different responses to things on the web and, and I&#8217;m fortunate enough that I can, on my team, and this is why it&#8217;s great to have diverse teams, is like when we&#8217;re building content, when we&#8217;re building websites, I can help guide us and say, or help give that feedback about auto playing things and put my foot down and say we are not going to build this in a way that is inaccessible. We are not going to build this animation that seems cute, doesn&#8217;t have any functionality or whatever, but I know is going to like ruin somebody&#8217;s day or whatever, just because they accidentally like encountered this webpage.</p>



<p>[00:31:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Really fascinating. You are educating me in an area that I genuinely don&#8217;t have much contact with. So it&#8217;s really fascinating. Given everything that you&#8217;ve just said, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s gonna be a proportion of people who have woken up to this, during the listening of this, and thinking to themselves, okay, how do I find out more? So just for those of us who are starting on this journey, just give us some idea of where the resources might lie. Where might we go? Who might we speak to? Which organizations? So that could be online, or a book, or an organization, whatever you like.</p>



<p>[00:32:22] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> I think if you&#8217;re interested in learning more about accessibility, there are a few organizations that do a pretty good job with providing accessibility education. The first is the company Deque, they make an accessibility testing extension, but they also offer really great courses and training and have a lot of just general resources on their website. They even have a great resource library of accessible components.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s Knowbility, which is spelled k n o w b i l i t y. Also has a number of great webinars and they have a conference, so a great place to go for resources. There&#8217;s a really great community on Twitter, on accessibility, Twitter. There are a number of experts there, and I&#8217;m always a big fan of if you really want to understand accessibility, you&#8217;ve gotta read the specs.</p>



<p>And actually, it&#8217;s ironic but when some of the April, 2021 working group note that I keep referencing, when that came out, some folks criticized it online saying, this document itself isn&#8217;t very accessible. It&#8217;s very, very extensive, very thorough, very meaty. And so they went back, God bless them, they went back and they made the document itself more accessible. They added some icons which help with scanning the document. They added some more use cases and examples, so people could better understand how these things work in real life. So it&#8217;s a lot. I think it&#8217;s actually the working group note on cognitive accessibility, I think is actually sometimes easier to parse than WCAG itself, in terms of the content.</p>



<p>And I also want people to understand that there are probably some accessibility champions in your network. You may have somebody on your team or in your company who has a good understanding of maybe how accessibility intersects with your product or your sector. And talk to those people. I learned a lot about accessibility from the agency I work for called Alley. Shout out to Kevin and Owen, who both really mentored me and helped me really level up my accessibility knowledge. So like use the people that you have in your network. They really want to talk to you about these things. So I hope that&#8217;s helpful.</p>



<p>[00:34:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s really helpful. But also just to know that this is an area where there are actual jobs. There are people who do this, who would like to assist you. There&#8217;s probably somebody in your local area who takes this all very seriously, and would be willing to speak to you on the phone. It&#8217;s not just, okay, I heard a podcast, I can forget about it now. There are calls to be made and people to meet who will help you with this.</p>



<p>[00:34:54] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Absolutely, and so I don&#8217;t do accessibility full time at my job. I&#8217;m a developer. So there may be accessibility champions who are developers in your organization. There may be people who are designers who work in content, who work in strategy. The awesome thing about accessibility is that it touches all areas of the product. And, there are also people, yes professionals who focus exclusively on accessibility and who can do things like perform an audit of your product.</p>



<p>And if you are starting from zero on this, a lot of times those people can be the best people to reach out to because they are going to give you that comprehensive look that includes content design, you know development, all strategy, like all aspects of accessibility.</p>



<p>[00:35:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned that you work for . A company called Alley. I&#8217;ll link in the show notes. Your agency isn&#8217;t uniquely focusing on this area?</p>



<p>[00:35:48] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> No.</p>



<p>[00:35:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a web design agency?</p>



<p>[00:35:51] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yeah. So the Alley Group is an agency that works with a lot of enterprise level publishers. And I work for a company within the Alley group called Lead, and we&#8217;re a platform for mid and small size independent publishers. But accessibility is something that the Alley group takes very seriously.</p>



<p>We work with a lot of very large publications. So we have to make sure that we get this right for them, and the millions of people who visit those websites. And we are hiring. If you&#8217;re interested in joining a group that takes accessibility very seriously, please visit alley.co/careers. We are always hiring software developers and have a number of other positions available.</p>



<p>[00:36:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This is such an interesting subject. I feel that we could go on for hours more. But Christina Deemer, thank you so much. Is there a place where you are comfortable people connecting directly with you? It may be Twitter or email?</p>



<p>[00:36:44] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Yeah, you can find me on twitter at c a h d e e m e r. And this was so much fun. It went by so fast.</p>



<p>[00:36:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much for joining us. I&#8217;m really hoping that it&#8217;s gonna have opened some people&#8217;s eyes to something, which seems to be incredibly important. Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:37:00] <strong>Christina Deemer:</strong> Thank you.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://twitter.com/cahdeemer">Christina Deemer</a>. Christina is a senior UX developer at <a href="https://joinlede.com/">Lede</a>, a company of the <a href="https://alley.com/">Alley Group</a>, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. She&#8217;s passionate about inclusivity and community and has spoken at a variety of events about the subject.</p>



<p>Christina is autistic and brings her personal experience with neurodivergence and disability to bear in her work.</p>



<p>At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/session/embracing-minds-of-all-kinds/">presentation</a> called &#8220;embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities&#8221;. And it&#8217;s this talk which is the foundation of the podcast today.</p>



<p>In her description of the presentation, Christina wrote, &#8220;cognitive disabilities are among the most prevalent types of disabilities, yet experts have struggled to provide web accessibility best practices around this area due to cognitive disabilities being such a broad category. However recent work by standards groups has begun to address this deficiency&#8221;.</p>



<p>In past episodes, we&#8217;ve covered website accessibility from some different angles, and today we focus on how the web might be experienced by people with cognitive disabilities.</p>



<p>First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually means, and what it encompasses. It&#8217;s a wide range of things, and so we talk about how people may differ in the way that they access the web. Memory, over complicated interfaces and readability are a few of the areas that we touch upon.</p>



<p>We also discuss what legislation there is in place to offer guidance to those wishing to make their sites more accessible, and as you&#8217;ll hear, it&#8217;s a changing landscape.</p>



<p>Towards the end, Christina talks about her own late diagnosis of autism and how this shapes her experience of the web, particularly with auto-play content and when web design includes elements which flash or flicker.</p>



<p>Typically, when we record the podcast, there&#8217;s not a lot of background noise, but that&#8217;s not always the case. This is the last of the live recordings from WordCamp US 2022, and you may notice that the recordings have a little echo or other strange audio artifacts. Whilst the podcasts are more than listenable, I do hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play.</p>



<h2>Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.deque.com/">Deque</a></p>



<p><a href="https://knowbility.org/">Knowbility</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/">WCAG</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/">W3C Working Group Note 29 April 2021</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"Do The Woo Community: The Flexibility of the WP-CLI Configuration Files";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=73110";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://dothewoo.io/devlife_snippet-the-flexibility-of-the-wp-cli-configuration-files/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:401:"<p>For those special projects, you could set multiple WP-CLI config files in various places.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/devlife_snippet-the-flexibility-of-the-wp-cli-configuration-files/">The Flexibility of the WP-CLI Configuration Files</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:13:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"HeroPress: A Community That Transcends Labels";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=4922";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:142:"https://heropress.com/essays/a-community-that-transcends-labels/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-community-that-transcends-labels";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18134:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/102522-min.jpeg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: WordPress is an incredible opportunity to build a successful business that is flexible enough to give me the lifestyle I want." />
Here is Katie reading her own story aloud.



<p>WordPress has changed my life in so many ways.</p>



<p>This is the story of how I discovered WordPress and used it to build a business that gives me financial freedom and a flexible lifestyle.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s the story of how the unique nature of the WordPress community has allowed me to achieve my dreams, without the obstacles and prejudices which are common in other industries.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s the story of how I haven’t achieved this “despite” being a woman founder and a mother. And how it wasn’t “because of” these things either. Instead, it was because of the incredible WordPress community which transcends these labels.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-the-beginning-building-a-career-without-a-goal">The Beginning &#8211; Building a Career Without a Goal</h3>



<p>I’ve always been extremely motivated and hard working, getting top marks at school and University. However, as a child I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Everyone around me seemed to have specific ambitions to work towards. My sister wanted to be a doctor. My Mum had always wanted to be a doctor too. My Dad had always wanted to be a TV producer. And surprise surprise, they all achieved those goals.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But I was different, as I had never seen a job that I wanted to do.</p>



<blockquote><p>It felt like there was something wrong with me.</p></blockquote>



<p>Careers advisors tried to force me into a category. This was normally very basic, for example: “You’re good at writing, you should be a journalist” &#8211; regardless of the fact that I obviously didn’t have the right personality type for that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>However, it didn’t really matter because I was hard working enough to do well at whatever I tried, and I didn’t feel I <em>needed</em> a specific purpose &#8211; whatever other people thought. I chose my favorite subjects to study at University (English Literature and Philosophy), focussing on the skills it would give me rather than what career it would lead to. And when I graduated in 2002, I applied for a range of jobs where I felt like I had the required skills. It took about 20 attempts, but eventually I got a job offer.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I didn’t enjoy my first job, which was being a Technical Writer for a software company. After that, I got a job as a Trainee Manager for a relatively small company &#8211; and that’s when things started to get interesting. I discovered that by being enthusiastic and showing my potential, I could mould the job around my skills rather than the other way round. I’m good at research and writing, so the company gave me responsibilities in those areas and let me take over the company newsletter, communication and marketing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Since then, every role I’ve had (including at Barn2) has evolved around my skills and experience. This makes it much more interesting, as well as more useful to the company! I realised that you don’t need a specific career goal. Instead, you can just focus on what you’re good at and where your interests lie, and everyone benefits.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-the-drive-to-do-more">The Drive to Do More</h3>



<p>When I started my career, I absolutely did not have the skills or independence to start my own company. The UK education system does nothing to encourage budding entrepreneurs, or even to acknowledge entrepreneurship as a possible career option. My path had always been to go to University and then “get a job”.&nbsp;</p>



<p>However, it was the early 2000’s and the world was changing. I could see the internet taking the world by storm and creating opportunities that had never existed before. I enviously watched people who were becoming successful by building innovative online businesses. I didn’t just want their success &#8211; I wanted the flexible lifestyles that they were achieving by working for themselves.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote><p>My husband Andy and I talked endlessly about how we wanted to stop working for other people and start a business together.</p></blockquote>



<p>However, neither of us were big risk-takers or “big ideas” people. As a result, we stayed in our jobs for the rest of our 20’s, feeling more and more fed up and longing for more freedom.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-discovering-wordpress-while-becoming-a-mother">Discovering WordPress While Becoming a Mother</h3>



<p>Eventually, in 2009/10 we agreed for Andy to quit his job to start a web design company. The plan was for him to do the technical work, while I would do the marketing, content and SEO alongside my main job. My salary was just about enough to support both of us through the early days, so while it was the biggest risk we had ever taken, it wasn’t a huge gamble.</p>



<p>While Andy was a Senior Software Developer, he had to teach himself web design and PHP. We chose to start a web design business because it felt like an easy market to enter, and would nicely combine his technical abilities with my business and marketing skills. We didn’t have the confidence to start a business that required large upfront investment or a higher level of risk.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While our initial focus was designing websites for small local businesses, Andy discovered WordPress during our first project. He immediately realized that it was the best way to build any type of website. I remember being sceptical when he first told me about it because it sounded like a template-based blogging platform, but he was absolutely right! We used it for all our clients’ websites.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2011, our daughter Sophia was born.</p>



<blockquote><p>Surprisingly, being a mother actually helped me to build the business.</p></blockquote>



<p>Andy and I had felt comfortable reducing our income to one salary, but it was much scarier for us both to quit our jobs. After all, that was the point where our finances would be completely reliant on the business.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Fortunately, becoming a mother eased this transition because my income naturally reduced during my year’s maternity leave. My parents were amazingly helpful while Sophia was a baby, giving me the opportunity to breast-feed every couple of hours while working on the business in between (and often at the same time!). It was also nice having Andy working from home, which meant that I got more help and felt less alone with the baby than if he had to go out to work.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It wasn’t easy. When Sophia was little, I always felt that she was different from other babies but when I raised my concerns, people told me not to be silly. At 6 months old, it became more obvious and she was diagnosed with a rare form of childhood epilepsy along with a lot of uncertainty for the future. I have never been so disappointed to be proved right! Sophia was given strong medication which made her very ill. Luckily the medication worked, but it was a terrifying time.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote><p>Sophia’s illness made me realise how important it is to have flexible work that can fit around your lifestyle.</p></blockquote>



<p>While Andy and I did less work during this period, we still kept moving forward with some projects. I remember discussing one client’s website in a hospital waiting room! This helped to take our mind off things, while also helping to pay the bills. I’m not sure how we would have copied if we had traditional jobs where we were expected to be in the office.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>When it was time to finish maternity leave and return to my previous job, I wanted to quit and stay with Barn2 full-time, but was still too scared to make the commitment. Fortunately, ‘fate’ made the decision for me because my employer decided to withdraw all their family-friendly policies with no notice. They refused to allow me to work part-time, while at the same time trying to downgrade my role and reduce my salary by about 40%! To make a long story short, this created the perfect opportunity to jump head first into the business, which I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do otherwise.&nbsp;</p>



<p>After that, the web design business grew quickly. We grew a name for ourselves as one of the only UK companies specializing in WordPress, and had clients all over the world. You can read about this in more detail in my previous HeroPress essay, “<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/building-a-new-life/">Building a New Life</a>”.</p>



<h3 id="h-the-switch-to-wordpress-plugins">The Switch to WordPress Plugins</h3>



<p>True to form, after a few years of building a successful client-facing web design agency, I wanted more. Client work was very demanding in terms of time and commitment, and it was difficult to take time off work. I hired freelance designers and developers to help with the workload, but was managing more projects than I could handle.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2015, Andy and I took a month off work to travel around France in a motorhome. It was the last chance to do this during term time as our daughter Sophia was about to start school. One of my freelance project managers looked after our clients and I tried to switch off for once. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out and I returned home to a lot of unhappy clients! One project completely imploded while I was away, and I remember responding to some very stressful emails by the pool at one campsite.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As owner of a WordPress agency, I was very familiar with a range of WordPress themes and plugins. I watched the big product companies with envy, such as Gravity Forms, The Events Calendar, and others. I could see that selling WordPress products would bring even more lifestyle benefits than client work.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote><p>After spending a year trying and failing to get a theme accepted onto ThemeForest, we decided to start building plugins.</p></blockquote>



<p>We figured that plugins could be simpler and more defined than themes, and were therefore more realistic for a single developer to build. We looked around for ideas, and found them in a range of places.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Our first plugin was released in March 2016 &#8211; <a href="https://barn2.com/wordpress-plugins/woocommerce-protected-categories/">WooCommerce Protected Categories</a>. We had seen on the WooCommerce Ideas forum that there was demand for a plugin like this, and at that time nothing like it existed. It was relatively straightforward to develop and because it was so niche, I felt confident in how to market it. Despite this, we were still amazed to get our first sale a few days after launching. It actually felt like maybe we could build a product business after all!&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-tables-tables-and-more-tables">Tables, Tables, and More Tables</h3>



<p>The second plugin was <a href="https://barn2.com/wordpress-plugins/posts-table-pro">Posts Table Pro</a>, which was a more advanced version of a plugin that we had built to list a client’s blog posts in a table. We had released it as a free plugin, which was an excellent opportunity because people started sending us feature requests that we could use to build more plugins. This directly led to the development of <a href="https://barn2.com/wordpress-plugins/woocommerce-product-table/">WooCommerce Product Table</a>, which has turned over more than $1,500,000 since its launch, and our current bestselling plugin <a href="https://barn2.com/wordpress-plugins/document-library-pro/">Document Library Pro</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>All of these plugins are similar in that they list information from the WordPress database in a searchable table with filters. However, people use them for radically different purposes and each plugin is tailored to a specific use case.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote><p>We never planned to become a table plugin company &#8211; it just happened over time, as a result of adding one free plugin to wordpress.org.</p></blockquote>



<p>I think that’s how a lot of businesses work &#8211; you try one thing, and that opens doors to more opportunities. It’s the same as my career &#8211; I tried a few things and let them evolve in their natural direction. The most important thing is that you put yourself out there and get things done.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-growing-barn2-plugins-and-moving-abroad">Growing Barn2 Plugins, and Moving Abroad</h3>



<p>The plugin business has continued to grow. We’ve released more and more plugins, mostly specializing in WooCommerce. We’ve built a team, which currently consists of more than 14 people.</p>



<blockquote><p>Andy and I have taken advantage of the freedoms that we have built for ourselves. For example, last year we moved from the UK to the sunny island of Mallorca in Spain!</p></blockquote>



<p>I work when I realistically can, and I also take time out to do fun things like hiking in the mountains, or paddleboarding in the sea.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I try to be an active part of the WordPress community, for example attending WordCamps and building partnerships with other WordPress companies. I talk to people who run similar companies every day, and hope that I help them as much as they help me. Working together like this helps everyone to grow &#8211; the aim is to complement each other’s work rather than competing.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-being-a-woman-founder-in-wordpress">Being a Woman Founder in WordPress</h3>



<p>I’ve never had a problem being in a male dominated environment. As a teenager, my best friends were boys despite the fact that I went to an all-girls school. At a school parents’ evening, my teacher said that I had a “male mind” &#8211; whatever that means! As a student, I lived with Andy and 3 other guys. Before having children, most of my friends were men. So maybe ending up in a male-dominated industry is no coincidence.</p>



<p>However, I can only talk about my own experiences, and I have never experienced any issues from being a woman in WordPress. A lot of companies aim to be “color blind” and I can’t really comment on this, but I would describe the WordPress community as “gender blind”.</p>



<p>Sure, most of the people who run WordPress product companies are men, and so are most of the people at WordCamps. Most of my WordPress friends are men. However, I don’t think that’s due to discrimination because the community is 100% welcoming to the women who do choose to join. In fact, it is rare for people I meet to even acknowledge any sort of gender difference &#8211; even people I know well. Everyone is just treated equally, regardless of gender.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Interestingly, the most marginalized that I have ever felt is by other women, and by people who are trying to promote gender equality. For example, at WordCamp Europe this year, another woman founder asked me if I work at Barn2 or if I’m just here with my husband! I have never, ever been asked a question like that by a man in the WordPress community.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At WordCamp US this year, I spent almost the entire time with men and not one person drew attention to the fact that I was a different gender. As a result, I resented having my pronouns written in huge letters on my name tag! I realise this is largely in support of people in the LGBTQIA+ community but for me, it was the first time that the WordPress community had ever made a point of my gender, and felt uncomfortable and counter-productive.</p>



<p>Of course, most people feel imposter syndrome at some point, and I’m no exception. I wonder whether people only invite me on podcasts and to join groups because they want a token woman. Equally, I wonder if people respect me less because I’m not a developer. However, those are my own personal hangups and with a couple of tiny exceptions, no one has ever done anything to make me feel this way.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-what-does-wordpress-mean-to-me">What Does WordPress Mean To Me?</h3>



<p>Most industries &#8211; including tech industries &#8211; demand long hours and huge levels of commitment. It’s much harder to work <em>and </em>have a life. For me, WordPress is an incredible opportunity to build a successful business that is flexible enough to give me the lifestyle I want. I work hard when I choose to work hard. I relax when I want to relax. It’s my choice.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The barriers to entry are incredibly low, and you don’t need any specific qualifications to get started with WordPress. Most people in the industry work remotely, which brings a much better work-life balance for both the founders and team members. Everything is done online, which makes it easier to bootstrap a business with minimal investment. And yet despite this flexibility, the market is absolutely huge and you can find real success with WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p>A lot of people think that the WordPress industry is changing due to the spate of acquisitions over the past few years.</p>



<blockquote><p>Some product company owners feel like they will be left behind unless they join one of the big players. However, as the owner of a self-owned plugin company, I haven’t seen any evidence of this.</p></blockquote>



<p>We’re continuing to grow and thrive. In fact, being independent has advantages because I can make decisions and move quickly, without any red tape.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As well as the opportunities it brings, WordPress is an incredibly inclusive place to build a business. It does this in a natural, unintentional way where people can just “be”, without being judged. And that’s the best way.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-community-that-transcends-labels/">A Community That Transcends Labels</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Katie Keith";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"WPTavern: WordPress Accessibility Day 2022 Publishes Speaker Lineup";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138914";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-accessibility-day-2022-publishes-speaker-lineup";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2639:"<p><a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/">WordPress Accessibility Day</a> is just one week away on November 2-3, and registration is still open. Co-lead organizer Amber Hinds published an impressive speaker lineup with 40 speakers from 14 countries. She also noted that 40% of the event&#8217;s sessions have at least one speaker who identifies as living with a disability.</p>



<p>WordPress professionals who want to learn more about creating accessible websites will want to attend, as the schedule is loaded with a wealth of educational presentations from well-known accessibility experts. Co-lead organizer Joe Dolson will start with opening remarks, followed by the <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/keynote/">keynote session</a> from <a href="https://incl.ca/">Nicolas Steenhout</a>, an accessibility consultant and host of the <a href="https://a11yrules.com/">A11y Rules Podcast</a>.</p>



<p>The 24-hour event will include practical sessions on <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/selling-accessibility-to-skeptical-clients/">Selling Accessibility to Skeptical Clients</a>, <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/think-smart-and-adapt-meeting-wcag-2-without-rebuilding-from-scratch/">Meeting WCAG 2 without rebuilding from scratch</a>, and <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/the-alt-scene-when-and-how-to-write-alternative-text/">When and How to Write Alternative Text</a>.</p>



<p>Gary Aussant, Director of Digital Accessibility Consulting at Perkins Access, and Stephen Plummer, Creative Manager at the Perkins School for the Blind, will be presenting a session titled &#8220;<a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/proof-accessible-websites-can-be-beautiful-too/">Proof: Accessible websites can be beautiful too</a>&#8221; that will debunk some of the common myths about accessible websites. They plan to show real examples of modern and engaging sites that also work well for screen readers, keyboard users, and sighted users.</p>



<p>Full-stack developer Nikole Garcia and Annie Heckel, Electronic Information Technology Accessibility Manager at Cornell University, will give a session on <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/sessions/developing-accessibility-first-wordpress-themes/">Developing Accessibility-First WordPress Themes</a>.</p>



<p>Check out the <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/schedule/">schedule</a> to browse the rest of the lineup and add the sessions you want to attend to your calendar. <a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/attendee-registration/">Registration</a> is free and the event will be live streamed via YouTube with closed captions.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 Oct 2022 04:08:02 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"WPTavern: Arc FSE: A New Multipurpose Block Theme for WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138817";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://wptavern.com/arc-fse-a-new-multipurpose-block-theme-for-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2260:"<p><a href="https://olivethemes.com/">Olive Themes</a>, a relatively new independent theme shop, has released its third block theme on the WordPress.org directory. <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/arc-fse/">Arc FSE</a> is a high contrast, multipurpose theme, designed to enable a broad range of flexibility through support for full-site editing features.</p>



<img />



<p>The theme features the open source and exceptionally readable <a href="https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/poppins">Poppins web font</a> in various weights and sizes. The color palette is dark with a bright lemon-yellow accent color. It&#8217;s bold without being overly splashy, making it suitable for professional use cases.</p>



<p>Arc FSE does not come with any style variations, but users can easily change the accent colors for buttons, headings, and anything else by editing the templates.</p>



<img />



<p>The theme comes with 20 custom patterns, which make up different sections of the design. They are all conveniently grouped together under &#8220;Arc FSE&#8221; in the Patterns explorer, so you don&#8217;t have to hunt for the ones that belong to the theme. It includes full-page patterns for the home, about, services, and portfolio pages. There are also section patterns for things like the default footer, 404 page, a promotional video, sidebar, search cover block, services, and more.</p>



<img />



<p>When first installing Arc FSE, the home page is set up to be nearly identical to <a href="https://demo.olivethemes.com/?demo=arc-fse">the demo</a>, making it easy for users to get started customizing. It would be helpful to have a style guide for the theme, but for the most part you get what you see with the demo for the free version. Olive Themes also makes a <a href="https://olivethemes.com/wordpress-themes/arc-pro/">pro version</a>, which includes additional features, WooCommerce support, and more blocks for things like testimonials and star ratings.</p>



<p>Arc FSE is good option for businesses, agencies, foundations, or artists with portfolios. After less than a week, it&#8217;s already being used on more than 100 sites. The theme is available to <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/arc-fse/">download</a> for free on WordPress.org. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 26 Oct 2022 02:55:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) Now Available";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=13670";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6611:"<p>Release Candidate 3 (RC3) is now available for testing! The general release is just one week away with WordPress 6.1 scheduled for release on Tuesday, November 1, 2022. </p>



<p>This RC3 release is the final opportunity for you to test and help to ensure the resilience of the 6.1 release by performing a final round of reviews and checks. Since the WordPress ecosystem is vast and composed of thousands of plugins and themes the entire project benefits from the time you take to assist.</p>



<p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can test WordPress 6.1 RC3 in three ways:</p>



<p><strong>Option 1: </strong>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</p>



<p><strong>Option 2: </strong>Direct download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.1-RC3.zip">RC3 version (zip)</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Option 3:</strong> Use the WP-CLI command:</p>



<p><code>wp core update --version=6.1-RC3</code></p>



<p>Additional information on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-1/">6.1 release cycle is available here</a>.</p>



<p>Check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+6-1/">6.1-related developer notes</a> in the coming weeks detailing all upcoming changes.</p>



<h2><strong>What’s in WordPress 6.1 RC3?</strong></h2>



<p>Since Release Candidate 2, approximately 60 items have been addressed. </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.1">GitHub tickets</a></li>



<li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=closed&changetime=10%2F18%2F2022..10%2F25%2F2022&resolution=fixed&milestone=6.1&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Trac tickets</a> </li>
</ul>



<p>WordPress 6.1 is the third major release for 2022, following 5.9 and 6.0, released in January and May of this year, respectively.</p>



<p>To learn more about the highlights for both end-users and developers, you’re invited to read more about them in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-1-rc1-now-available/">RC1 announcement post</a> and review the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/12/wordpress-6-1-field-guide/">WordPress 6.1 Field Guide</a>.</p>



<h2><strong>Plugin and theme developers</strong></h2>



<p>All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.1 RC3 and update the “<em>Tested up to”</em> version in their readme file to 6.1. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forums</a>, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of November 1st.</p>



<h2><strong>Translate WordPress</strong></h2>



<p>Do you speak a language other than English? <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev">Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.</a>&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Keep WordPress bug-free – help with testing</strong></p>



<p>Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/09/21/help-test-wordpress-6-1/">This detailed guide</a> is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release.</p>



<p>Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – regardless of prior experience.</p>



<p>Want to know more about testing releases like this one? Read about the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives</a> that happen in Make Core. You can also join a <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">core-test channel</a> on the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack workspace</a>.</p>



<p>If you have run into an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file one on WordPress Trac</a>. This is also where you can find a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



<p>To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the <em>What’s New In Gutenberg</em> posts for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/09/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-1-15-september/">14.1</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/09/01/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-0-31-august/">14.0</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/08/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-9-17-august/">13.9</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/08/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-8-3-august/">13.8</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-7-20-july/">13.7</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/07/07/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-6-6-july/">13.6</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/06/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-5-22-june/">13.5</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/06/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-4-8-june/">13.4</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/05/26/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-3-0-may-25/">13.3</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/05/12/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-2-may-11/">13.2</a>, and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/04/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-13-1-27-april/">13.1</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2>RC3, A Penultimate Haiku</h2>



<p><em>The time ticks forward<br />Release nears ever closer<br />Download and review</em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p>Props to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/">Dan Soschin</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/users/spacedmonkey/">Jonny Harris</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 25 Oct 2022 20:29:49 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Jonathan Pantani";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"Do The Woo Community: A WooSesh Chat with Chris Mospaw and Krissie VandeNoord";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=73158";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://dothewoo.io/woosesh-chat-chris-mospaw-krissie-vandenoord/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:428:"<p>In this episode we talk about integrating 3D visual customizations into your clients WooCommerce sites and WooCommerce performance.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woosesh-chat-chris-mospaw-krissie-vandenoord/">A WooSesh Chat with Chris Mospaw and Krissie VandeNoord</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:26:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"WPTavern: Gutenberg Contributors Explore a New Browse Mode for Navigating the Site Editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138870";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-explore-a-new-browse-mode-for-navigating-the-site-editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4478:"<p>It&#8217;s easy to get lost while trying to get around the Site Editor unless you are working day and night inside the tool. The navigation is jumpy and confusing, especially when going from template browsing to template editing to modifying individual blocks. A large PR is in progress for redesigning this UI with the introduction of a &#8220;browse mode&#8221; that would <a href="https://wptavern.com/james-koster-shares-design-explorations-that-transform-wordpress-site-editor-into-a-more-visual-user-friendly-tool">make the experience feel more like a design tool</a>.</p>



<p>Gutenberg lead engineer Riad Benguella <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44770">opened the PR</a> as a continuation of the ongoing work on this project, which has its roots in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/23328">ideas</a> and explorations that have been fermenting since 2019. He shared a video that roughly demonstrates the target for the proposed UI changes.</p>







<p>It essentially introduces a “navigable frame” where users can select from a menu of features on the left. More detailed efforts on improving the animations and placement of the menu items is happening simultaneously within the ticket.</p>



<p>The original idea was to include the &#8220;Navigation menu&#8221; item inside the sidebar, but Benguella removed it in favor of keeping the PR contained to simply adding the &#8220;edit/view&#8221; mode.</p>



<p>Although such a large PR has the potential to introduce a slew of regressions, Benguella said there is no other way around a big PR due to the the necessity of the structural changes to how the site editor is organized. He is attempting to keep it narrowly focused and not try to tackle features like browsing capabilities and adding UI (template lists, global styles, etc) to the sidebar.</p>



<p>The idea is not without <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44770#issuecomment-1281312589">some pushback</a>. Alex Stine, Cloud Platform Engineer at Waystar, warned against introducing another Mode into Gutenberg, saying it &#8220;feels kind of reckless considering we haven&#8217;t refined existing modes for all users.&#8221; He noted that Gutenberg already has select/edit mode contexts.</p>



<p>&#8220;This was a feature basically added for screen readers only,&#8221; Stine said. &#8220;I am hoping this will one day be removed, but we&#8217;re not quite there yet.</p>



<p>&#8220;I think the community is trying to solve the wrong problem. If Gutenberg itself did not have such a complex UI, there would not be the need for a hundred different modes in a hundred different contexts, blocks, or even editors. We have gone so crazy making everything so quickly, no one thought about how to unify the interface across all editors. This feels like it could be another patch to a bigger problem.&#8221;</p>



<p>Stine cautioned against growing the UI for something that ultimately doesn&#8217;t make things any simpler.</p>



<p>&#8220;In a sense this PR doesn&#8217;t introduce any new mode, it just redesigns the current navigation panel a bit,&#8221; Benguella <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44770#issuecomment-1281319290">said</a> in response. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s an opportunity to improve the a11y of the navigation in the site editor.</p>



<p>&#8220;The confusion in this PR is that it&#8217;s not about another mode in the editor itself, it&#8217;s higher level, it&#8217;s how we choose which template and template part to edit before actually entering the editor.&#8221;</p>



<p>Although the project&#8217;s contributors have been referring to it as &#8220;browse mode,&#8221; it is essentially a redesign for the existing UI to make it more intuitive for users to navigate. Gutenberg may not need any more new &#8220;modes&#8221; but the site editor is in dire need design improvements that will unify the experience and make it less chaotic for getting around.</p>



<p>During the most <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/24/editor-chat-summary-wednesday-20-october-2022/">recent core Editor meeting</a>, Gutenberg contributors called for feedback on the big PR, since it has so many moving parts and needs more scrutiny. It&#8217;s not ready to land in the next release of Gutenberg yet, but the concept is rapidly taking shape and may expand to include more features in the sidebar once the basic structure is in place.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 25 Oct 2022 04:14:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"Do The Woo Community: The Power of WooCommerce Blocks";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=73101";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"https://dothewoo.io/the-power-of-woocommerce-blocks/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:374:"<p>The WooCommerce team is actively exploring the interplay of block themes and full site editing within a Woo store.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/the-power-of-woocommerce-blocks/">The Power of WooCommerce Blocks</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 24 Oct 2022 09:01:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60:"Gutenberg Times: What art can you create with WordPress 6.1?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=22528";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/what-art-can-you-create-with-wordpress-6-1/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4422:"<p>Over the last year, the <a href="https://href.li/?https://block-museum.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Museum of Block Art</a> was launched, built by and for the WordPress community. The intent is to surprise and show off what one can do with the block editor in the form of making fantastic art. If you look through the site and wonder just <em>how</em> something was made, that’s by design. </p>



<p><strong>What art can you create with WordPress 6.1?</strong></p>



<p><a href="https://href.li/?https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/09/26/core-editor-improvement-catalyst-for-creativity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">With WordPress 6.1 bringing an immense number of new design tools</a> on November 1st, there’s a neat opportunity to show how the art one can create with WordPress continues to evolve with the tooling. Just as you might walk through a museum and see how over the years, craftsmanship refined, this WordPress release marks yet another evolution in what’s possible with a true surge in the tools available. What might not have been possible to do before now might be. Consider this your official nudge to give 6.1 a try and see what you can create:</p>



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://block-museum.com/contribute/">Submit art</a></div>
</div>



<p>As a reminder, if you’re looking for inspiration for your creations and wondering <a href="https://block-museum.com/how/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">how folks have made theirs</a>, experimenting is highly recommended; play with <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/dimension-controls-overview/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dimension controls</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/05/coloring-your-images-with-duotone-filters/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">duotone</a>, and the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/05/20/core-editor-improvement-creating-containing-containers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Row/Stack/Group blocks</a>. You can also <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/09/26/core-editor-improvement-catalyst-for-creativity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">check out this roundup post</a> on all the hard work that’s gone into expanding the tools now found in blocks to get a sense of what’s new. </p>



<p><em>Keep in mind that you can always try out 6.1 early by testing the Beta/RC versions (</em><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-2-now-available/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>here’s the link to the 6.1 RC2 post</em></a><em> with more information). </em></p>



<p><strong>A look at what’s next&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>When I originally came up with this idea, my mind went wild thinking about <a href="https://masterwp.com/an-interview-with-anne-mccarthy-on-wordpresss-coolest-new-project-the-museum-of-block-art/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">printing the art, virtual “exhibits” based on releases, and more</a>; this marks a step into exploring what could be next for the Museum of Block Art with a <a href="https://block-museum.com/contribute/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new checkbox on the submission form</a> asking about whether someone is okay to have their work printed and new pages for each of the last two releases acting as virtual exhibits (<a href="https://block-museum.com/wordpress-5-9-exhibit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress 5.9</a>, <a href="https://block-museum.com/wordpress-6-0-exhibit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress 6.0</a>). While small changes, they set the groundwork for what might be ahead – perhaps you’ll see some of the art grace the next flagship WordCamp event you attend! </p>



<p><em>Thank you to <a href="https://twitter.com/karmatosed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tammie Lister</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/visualwebmaster" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rachel Winchester</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/richard_tabor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rich Tabor</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Ana_Segota/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ana Segota</a> for making up the lovely review committee for this art museum. </em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 22 Oct 2022 09:30:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Anne McCarthy";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"WPTavern: Openverse Audio Catalog Passes 800,000 Files, Audio Support Now Out of Beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138837";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://wptavern.com/openverse-audio-catalog-passes-800000-files-audio-support-now-out-of-beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2857:"<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/openverse/">Openverse</a>, formerly known as Creative Commons Search before it <a href="https://wptavern.com/creative-commons-search-is-now-openverse">joined the WordPress project</a>, has<a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress/status/1583077584136704001"> passed an important milestone</a> with its support for audio files. The catalog has now indexed more than 800,000 audio files and its development team has taken audio support out of beta.</p>



<p>Openverse visitors can now confidently search for and explore audio files for use in their videos, podcasts, or other creative projects, all available for free use under Creative Commons licenses. It is an incredible resource that is expanding and improving every day. Users can search on any device, but I found that Openverse audio searches and files are surprisingly easy to navigate on mobile.</p>




<img />



<img />




<p>Search results can be filtered by permitted use, license, audio category, extension, duration, and source. Previewing works well and each file has attribution information readily available to copy. Clicking on &#8220;Get this audio&#8221; will take the visitor to the file on the external collection&#8217;s website where it can be downloaded.</p>



<p>Deeper integration with WordPress core is on the roadmap for Openverse files. It would also be interesting to see WordPress&#8217; core Audio block integrate access to Openverse, in addition to pulling files from URL or the media library, the same way the Image block allows users to browse Openverse.</p>



<p>Gutenberg contributors are currently exploring how they can <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/44496">add basic Openverse integration to the inserter</a>. Matias Ventura, lead architect of Gutenberg, has proposed adding a Media tab to the existing tabs for Blocks, Patterns, and Reusable blocks, which allow dragging and dropping content into the canvas. This would offer more convenient access to the media library while building pages.</p>



<p>&#8220;The inserter panel should support the ability to drag media from the inserter into the canvas, including dragging into block placeholders to quickly update patterns and such with your own content,&#8221; Ventura said. &#8220;The Media tab would allow users to choose between categorized assets from the media library, and from Openverse.&#8221;</p>



<p>Gutenberg engineer Nik Tsekouras created <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/44424">a PR with a prototype</a>, basically a proof-of-concept, to explore how this might be implemented.</p>







<p>Development is still in the exploration and early stages, but this looks like a promising new integration that would make it easy for WordPress users to tap into Openverse&#8217;s catalog of 600 million free creative works.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 22 Oct 2022 02:03:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"Post Status: New Venue Accessibility Checklist in the WordCamp Organizer Handbook";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=141561";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"https://poststatus.com/new-venue-accessibility-checklist-in-the-wordcamp-organizer-handbook/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3494:"<h2 id="h-wordpress-community-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-october-17">WordPress Community News Roundup for the Week of October 17</h2>



<p>You may recall my prior post, <a href="https://poststatus.com/5-days-without-a-shower/">5 Days Without a Shower</a>, in which I wrote about my disability experiences at <strong>WCUS 2022</strong>. Writing things from a place of vulnerability isn’t always easy, but sometimes they’re necessary. Creating that post gave you insight into my experiences, and though I told them with a thread of humor, it was still not easy to share. But sharing with good intent, and with support, can help effect change. </p>



<p>This week the <strong>WCUS 2023</strong> team reached out to me in two ways, and when I tell you how warmed my heart was, you <em>still</em> can’t imagine the extent of my joy. First, <strong>Joe Simpson Jr.</strong> shared this new section of the <strong>WordCamp Organizer Handbook</strong> with me: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/first-steps/venue-accessibility-checklist/">Venue Accessibility Checklist</a>. This is a HUGE step toward accommodating those with disabilities at WordCamps. The team also reached out to me as they’re touring the venue for next year with questions as they went through, inviting my input. Kudos to the Community Team on these great efforts and forward momentum.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><strong>Black Friday and Cyber Monday</strong> are coming quickly! <a href="https://poststatus.com/submit-black-friday-cyber-monday-deals/">Submit your deals on our site</a>. We’ll be publishing that page soon!</p>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group has-theme-palette-9-color has-theme-palette-5-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<h2 class="has-theme-palette-9-color has-text-color">In the <strong>Member Spotlight</strong> this week, it's <a href="https://poststatus.com/member-spotlight-miriam-schwab/">Miriam Schwab of Strattic</a></h2>



<p>Miriam's advice for WordPress professionals:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-default has-theme-palette-3-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><p><strong>Keep learning.</strong> We're in an industry that is always evolving, and always developing, and that's one of the things that's so exciting, but also challenging, about it. It's important to try to stay up to speed on what's going on directly in our industry, while also keeping an eye on what's going on around us in parallel industries. It keeps us fresh and current.</p><cite><a href="https://poststatus.com/member-spotlight-miriam-schwab/">READ MORE →</a></cite></blockquote>
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<h2>Upcoming Events:</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wpaccessibility.day/">WordPress Accessibility Day</a> Nov 2-3</li><li><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/2022/november/">WordFest</a> November 18</li><li>Calls for Speakers and Sponsors are open at <a href="https://www.wpwealthbuilder.com/">WP Wealthbuilder Summit</a>.</li><li>WordCamps are back! <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/">Check the schedule online</a>. </li></ul>
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<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:50:46 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Michelle Frechette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"Post Status: Tech Roundup for the Week of October 17";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=141537";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"https://poststatus.com/tech-roundup-for-the-week-of-october-17/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3467:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<h2 id="h-wordpress-design-development-around-the-web">WordPress Design & Development Around the Web</h2>



<p>Here’s a glimpse of what’s going on in the world of design and development in the WordPress space this past week.</p>
</div></div>



<h3><a href="https://olliewp.com/global-styles-and-the-future-of-css-in-wordpress/">Move Over CSS, Here’s JSON</a></h3>



<p>I feel like we just started getting a better rhythm of using CSS and SCSS for bringing design systems to life with WordPress theming, and now we’re taking a step backward. At least that is what I thought <em>BEFORE</em> I read Post Status member <strong>Mike McAlister</strong>’s&nbsp;<a href="https://olliewp.com/global-styles-and-the-future-of-css-in-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thorough breakdown</a>&nbsp;of why <strong>JSON</strong> is so important and how it will help us all develop better. This goes for theme creators as well!</p>



<h3><a href="https://wpturbo.dev/">A New Generator Goes Turbo</a></h3>



<p>A new code generator site is freshly launched in beta.&nbsp;<a href="https://wpturbo.dev/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WPTurbo</a>, from the folks that bring you&nbsp;<a href="https://wpmarmite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WPMarmite</a>, has similar features that you’ve seen from&nbsp;<a href="https://generatewp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GenerateWP</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wp-hasty.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hasty</a>&nbsp;— <em>BUT</em> Turbo has a <code>theme.json</code> generator, which could come in handy building new block-based themes. It looks like it's packed with features comparable to its predecessors but updated for the Gutenberg era.</p>



<h3><a href="https://www.briancoords.com/wordpress-secret-world-of-javascript/">The Hidden World of Javascript in WordPress</a></h3>



<p>Post Status member <strong>Brian Coords</strong> shares <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/wordpress-secret-world-of-javascript/">his journey into the JavaScript maze that is contained in WordPress</a>. He explains how we can use it to its full potential, especially when we accept the fact that understanding <strong>Redux</strong> and <strong>React</strong> are super-important to work with the future of WordPress.</p>



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<h2>Cool Tool</h2>



<p>Each week we feature one cool tool that can help make your life easier as a WordPress builder.</p>



<h3>Grab Those Things After The Question Mark!</h3>



<p>This week I found myself in a sticky situation where I needed to show the parameters from a URL in the block editor. I really didn’t want to have to create a whole new custom block or a page template, so I searched for a plugin that could help. My discovery landed me on this little gem of a plugin called&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/url-params/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">URL Params</a>.&nbsp;It gives you the ability to add shortcodes to display the parameters from a URL. Short, sweet, and it works!</p>
</div></div>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:02:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Daniel Schutzsmith";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"Matt: Open Source Podcasting Client";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=67415";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"https://ma.tt/2022/10/open-source-podcasting-client/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2232:"<p>Automattic <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/16/22580023/automattic-pocket-casts-podcast-app-tumble-wordpress">acquired Pocket Casts last July</a>, and since we&#8217;ve been tapping away trying to make the best podcast client for people who love listening to podcasts.</p>



<p>And!</p>



<p>The team has been working really hard to make those clients totally open source and available to the world, <a href="https://blog.pocketcasts.com/2022/10/19/pocket-casts-mobile-apps-are-now-open-source/">and it&#8217;s now happened</a>. You can see all the code <a href="https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios">behind the iOS app</a> and <a href="https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-android">the Android app</a>, and modify it, make it your own, suggest a change, fix a bug, add a feature, fork it and make your own client, anything!</p>



<p>If your code gets merged into core, it&#8217;ll go out to users listening to literally <strong>millions of hours</strong> of podcasts a week. It&#8217;s also unusual to be able to peek under the hood of a consumer mobile app that is this widely used and see how it works.</p>



<p>Audio publishing and consumption is a beautiful complement to the web publishing that <a href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> is already so good at, and that <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> tries to nurture an ecosystem around. I love Spotify and Apple, and I hope that <a href="https://pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a> can do for podcast clients what Firefox in the early days and <a href="https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/">Chromium</a> now does for browsers — push the state of the art, be manically focused on user control, and grow a more decentralized and open web.</p>



<p>If you haven&#8217;t tried Pocket Casts yet, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/pocket-casts/id414834813">install for iOS</a> or <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.shiftyjelly.pocketcasts">Android</a>, and here&#8217;s <a href="https://support.pocketcasts.com/article/opml-import/">how to import your subscriptions using a format called OPML</a>. (And wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if trying out a new social network was that easy?)</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:44:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"Post Status: A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=141497";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://poststatus.com/a-visit-from-the-good-idea-fairy/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8807:"<h2 id="h-wordpress-business-roundup-for-the-week-of-october-17">WordPress Business Roundup for the Week of October 17</h2>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org • Are Active Install Counts Relevant to Your Business's Success? (Even if they are accurate? And they haven't been.) • Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model) • Follow Leaders, Adopt Standards • Tools and expertise from rtCamp • Some great and &#8220;doable&#8221; ideas for the future of plugin business metrics on the .org repo. Could some of them help put an end to intrusive and manipulative dark patterns in the WordPress Admin dashboard and notifications?  </p></div>


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<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">2</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
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<h2><a href="https://poststatus.com/building-supporting-and-selling-a-winning-product-with-or-without-wordpress-org/">Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org</a></h2>



<p>This week I sat down again with <strong>Eric Karkovack</strong> to record an episode of<strong> The Excerpt</strong> to talk about the three top WordPress stories on the top of our minds. The temporary loss of active install stats at WordPress.org has created an opportunity to rethink long-held assumptions and find new ways forward, so maybe it's not surprising that we made nearly the same selections. There's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces. A lot of people are thinking down this track and a lot of good ideas are coming forward. We've tried to pull together the ones we feel are best. <a href="https://poststatus.com/building-supporting-and-selling-a-winning-product-with-or-without-wordpress-org/">LISTEN or READ →</a> </p>



<h3>Are Active Install Counts Relevant to Your Business's Success? (Even if they are accurate?)</h3>



<p>In “<a href="https://getellipsis.com/blog/org-is-ineffective-plugin-distribution/">WordPress.org is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022</a>,” <strong>Alex Denning</strong> argues the likely temporary loss of <strong>Active Install Growth</strong> data for plugin owners is not a bottom-line, business-relevant concern. Apart from the revelation that that data itself was not just obfuscated and inexact but “<a href="https://wptavern.com/discussion-on-replacing-plugin-active-install-growth-data-continues-behind-closed-doors">basically garbage</a>,” Alex draws on <strong>Ellipsis</strong>&#8216; marketing experience and extensive data (as well as <strong>Iain Poulson</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://s.wptrends.co/w/kWJrSn4PAY2Xziux1YiYEQ">insights</a> at <strong>WP Trends</strong>) to show 1-2% conversion rates are the norm for plugins in the WP.org repository. Only a couple of big players can crack the 100k+ install tiers today.</p>



<h3>Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model)</h3>



<p><strong>Matt Cromwell </strong>politely disagrees with Alex as he makes <a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/the-case-for-the-wordpress-plugin-freemium-model/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Case for the WordPress Plugin Freemium Model</a>. (There's a great <a href="https://poststatus.slack.com/archives/C0413T6GD/p1666180505764299">Post Status Slack thread</a> on it too.) In it, Matt describes ways plugin owners can make the plugin repository's search engine work better for them, but Matt also notes a few of its deficiencies as well. </p>



<p>As <strong>Justin Labadie</strong> and others <a href="https://poststatus.com/connect-freemium-plugins-to-premium-extension-sales/">point out</a>, the search algorithm retrieves irrelevant results with more active installs than the plugin being searched for in many cases. It isn't possible to show all your plugins together anywhere on the repository apart from a buried profile tab under Contributor History. Even author searches do not retrieve every plugin from that source.</p>



<p>Matt's  best point is that an average conversion rate is just that — an average. He's seen much better results due to marketing efforts he feels are accessible to many plugin vendors. Matt also points to examples of successful freemium plugin shops, like <strong>Paid Memberships Pro</strong> which recently did an A/B test with their pricing page. <strong>Jason Coleman</strong> reported <a href="https://twitter.com/jason_coleman/status/1582355558396743680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1582355558396743680%7Ctwgr%5E60ce4bbce4981ae7479f4aaa2a1b7b13c8467ff3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcromwell.com%2Fthe-case-for-the-wordpress-plugin-freemium-model%2F" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the version with a freemium option converted better</a>.</p>



<h3><a href="https://gutenberg.10up.com/">Follow Leaders, Adopt Standards</a></h3>



<p><strong>10up</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://gutenberg.10up.com/">newly released resource site</a> for <strong>Gutenberg Best Practices</strong> is a signal WordPress has turned a corner. Here are expert tutorials, resources, references, and example code connected to 10up's <strong>GitHub </strong><a href="https://github.com/10up/gutenberg-best-practices/discussions">discussion board</a> for this evolving community resource. It's intended to go beyond the official WordPress documentation, according <strong>Fabian Kaegy</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://10up.com/blog/2022/10up-publicly-releases-its-gutenberg-best-practices/">launch announcement</a>. It's a “more client-services-centric approach tailored to engineering enterprise-level editorial experiences.” Enterprise agency adoption of Gutenberg is huge. As we see a growing body of accumulated knowledge, standards, and best practices emerging, it signals and amplifies a wave of change.</p>



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<h2>Quick Links</h2>



<ul><li><strong>Matt Cromwell</strong>, <strong>Natalie MacLees</strong>, <strong>Sybre Waaijer</strong>, and <strong>Amber Hinds</strong> have good ideas for future types of data disclosures that could help plugin owners. We've rounded them up from <strong>Mark Zahra</strong>&#8216;s renamed <strong>Trac</strong> ticket <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6511" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">#6511: Provide helpful plugin stats and insights</a>. Mark recently added <a href="https://twitter.com/VitoPeleg/status/1577784069596876800">some really great ideas</a> from <strong>Vito Peleg</strong> on <strong>Twitter</strong> that seemed to draw a nod from <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong>. <a href="https://poststatus.com/five-takes-on-helpful-plugin-stats-and-insights/">READ →</a></li><li><strong>Justin Labadie</strong> shared his experiences with the WordPress.org plugin repo and how he hopes it can change: 1) Ensure all search results are relevant. 2) Standardize a Premium product upsell interface in WP-Admin. 3) Make it possible to show other products by the same author/company. Could these steps help put an end to unpleasant sales gimmickry in the WordPress Admin dashboard and notifications? <a href="https://poststatus.com/connect-freemium-plugins-to-premium-extension-sales/">READ →</a></li><li>Speaking of leaders and standards, <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/profile/rtcamp/">rtCamp</a></strong> has a great <a href="https://rtcamp.com/subscribe/">monthly newsletter</a> where they've been sharing expertise and tools like <a href="https://github.com/rtcamp/theme-elementary">Elementary</a>, a starter theme for block-based, full-site editing themes with developer-friendly features. It’s solid boilerplate following WordPress coding standards that’s fully FSE-ready with a baked-in testing framework. <a href="https://poststatus.com/best-practices-and-tools-from-rtcamp/">READ →</a></li></ul>
</div></div>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:36:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Dan Knauss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:132:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 71) — Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=141328";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://poststatus.com/building-supporting-and-selling-a-winning-product-with-or-without-wordpress-org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54878:"<div class="wp-container-43 wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">This week I sat down again with Eric Karkovack to talk about the WordPress stories and topics that are on the top of our minds. Independently, we made nearly the same selections. There's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces.  </p></div>


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<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">2</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
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<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Skip to Transcript</a> ↓</p>







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<p class="has-drop-cap">This week I sat down again with <strong>Eric Karkovack</strong> to talk about the three top WordPress stories on the top of our minds. Independently, we made nearly the same selections! It seems the temporary loss of active install stats at WP.org has created an opportunity to rethink long-held assumptions and find new ways forward. Our news picks are all related to this in one way or another.  So there's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces.</p>



<h3>Are Active Install Counts Irrelevant to Your Plugin Business's Success? (Even if they were accurate?)</h3>



<blockquote><p>There are always going to be developers who push the envelope when it comes to littering the dashboard and just making it a difficult user experience. Maybe data is part of the way we solve that.</p><cite><strong>Eric Karkovac</strong></cite></blockquote>



<p>First up is <strong>Alex Denning</strong>&#8216;s article at <strong>Ellipsis</strong>, &#8220;<a href="https://getellipsis.com/blog/org-is-ineffective-plugin-distribution/">WordPress.org&nbsp;is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022</a>.&#8221; Alex argues the likely temporary loss of Active Install Growth data for plugin owners is not a bottom-line, business-relevant concern. Apart from the revelation that that data itself was not just obfuscated and inexact but &#8220;<a href="https://wptavern.com/discussion-on-replacing-plugin-active-install-growth-data-continues-behind-closed-doors">basically garbage</a>,&#8221; Alex draws on Ellipsis' marketing experience and extensive data (as well as <strong>Iain Poulson</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://s.wptrends.co/w/kWJrSn4PAY2Xziux1YiYEQ">insights</a> at <strong>WP Trends</strong>) to show 1-2% conversion rates are the norm for plugins in the&nbsp;WP.org repository. Only a couple of big players can crack the 100k+ install tiers today. </p>



<h3>The Plugin Repo's Glass Ceiling</h3>



<p>Alex notes this &#8220;glass ceiling&#8221; has a lot to do with how the repo's search algorithm works. It's biased to favor plugins that have many active installs already, so if you're not there yet, it's not going to help you get there. As a result of these observations, Alex disrecommends the plugin repo for anyone thinking about launching a business there on the freemium model. He considers WP.org a poor distribution channel and assumes the freemium product model's fate is tied to it. On that point, we're doubtful and optimistic about exceptions and opportunities for plugin developers to make their own way, with or without the repo.</p>



<p>While Eric and I don't fully agree with Alex, his data-based analysis does establish that the plugin repository is &#8220;broken&#8221; if it's intended to be a place where a small entrepreneur with a good product can break in and take off. </p>



<h3>Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model)</h3>



<p><strong>Matt Cromwell </strong>politely disagrees with Alex in a long, thoughtful post of his own:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/the-case-for-the-wordpress-plugin-freemium-model/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Case for the WordPress Plugin Freemium Model</a>.&nbsp;(There's a great <a href="https://poststatus.slack.com/archives/C0413T6GD/p1666180505764299">Post Status Slack thread</a> on it too.) In it, Matt describes ways plugin owners can make the&nbsp;wp.org&nbsp;plugin search engine work better for them, but he also notes a few of its deficiencies as well. His best point is that an average conversion rate is just that — an average. He's seen much better results due to marketing efforts he feels are accessible to many plugin vendors. Matt also points to examples of successful freemium plugin shops, like <strong>Paid Memberships Pro</strong> which recently did&nbsp;an A/B test&nbsp;with their pricing page, and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jason_coleman/status/1582355558396743680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1582355558396743680%7Ctwgr%5E60ce4bbce4981ae7479f4aaa2a1b7b13c8467ff3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcromwell.com%2Fthe-case-for-the-wordpress-plugin-freemium-model%2F" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the version with a freemium option converted better</a>.</p>



<p>Where Alex and Matt agree is how much the plugin repo has changed due to market saturation. It isn't an easy place to win in anymore. And I'm pretty sure Alex would agree with Matt this is true across the web as a whole — you can expect to have to work hard with stiff competition and give high attention to <strong>Google</strong> as well — not to mention all the other things that go into making and supporting a good product. </p>



<h3>Ideas for Improving the WordPress.org Plugin Repository</h3>



<p>Eric and I also discussed the excellent suggestions for useful, actionable data that product owners — and even agencies — would like from&nbsp;<a href="https://poststatus.com/five-takes-on-helpful-plugin-stats-and-insights/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a new, improved plugin directory</a>.&nbsp;<strong>Vito Peleg</strong>&#8216;s ideas are <a href="https://twitter.com/VitoPeleg/status/1577784069596876800" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">especially exciting</a>&nbsp;and seemed to draw a nod from <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong> on Twitter. We also note how better data for plugin owners might satisfy some needs that historically have led them to try all kinds of (often unpleasant) gimicks in the WordPress backend to connect with users and upsell or cross-market their products. In a comment at Post Status this week, <strong>Justin Labadie</strong> imagines <a href="https://poststatus.com/connect-freemium-plugins-to-premium-extension-sales/">how this could work as part of the plugin install process</a>, along with other suggestions. Eric connected this line of thinking with <strong>Mark Zahra</strong>&#8216;s question in a recent post at <strong>WP Mayor</strong>, <a href="https://wpmayor.com/is-deceptive-marketing-ruining-wordpress-reputation/">Is Deceptive Marketing Ruining WordPress’ Reputation?</a></p>



<h3>Plugin Developers Must Make Their Own Way</h3>



<p>Eric asked (and answered) a big question at the <strong>WP Minute</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://thewpminute.com/what-should-plugin-developers-expect-from-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">What should plugin developers expect from WordPress</a>? You've got to make your own way is a message I agree with, and I brought up my conversation with <strong>Till Krüss</strong> about&nbsp;<a href="https://poststatus.com/till-kruss-on-wordpress-performance-the-plugin-business-and-life/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Performance and the Plugin Business</a>&nbsp;as an example of all the possibilities that open up if you think about meeting big needs nobody else is meeting or solving big problems others are creating! </p>



<h3>Follow the Leaders, Adopt Standards</h3>



<p>Where we end up is <strong>10up</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://gutenberg.10up.com/">newly released resource site</a> for <strong>Gutenberg Best Practices</strong>. It's got tutorials, resources, references, example code — and they're encouraging use of <a href="https://github.com/10up/gutenberg-best-practices/discussions">their GitHub discussion board for the site</a>. It's intended to go beyond the official WordPress documentation, according <strong>Fabian Kaegy</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://10up.com/blog/2022/10up-publicly-releases-its-gutenberg-best-practices/">launch announcement</a>. It's a “more client-services-centric approach tailored to engineering enterprise-level editorial experiences.”</p>



<p>To me, that's a signal WordPress has turned a corner with Gutenberg. Top agency adoption of Gutenberg is huge, and as we see a growing body of accumulated knowledge, standards, and best practices emerging, it signals and amplifies a wave of change.</p>



<h3>Building Products to Scale Opens Doors and Creates Opportunities for Growth</h3>



<p>Toward the end of the show I suggest that plugin developers (as well as agencies) targeting middle and low-end markets have tended to neglect standards around performance testing and security because their customers don't need to scale and because they can treat performance and security as a hosting problem. That's a barrier to accessing high-value enterprise clients, hosts, and agencies connected to both. It represents lost opportunities and money left on the table.</p>



<div class="wp-container-44 wp-block-group has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /> Also mentioned in the show:</h3>



<p>Along with <a href="https://gutenberg.10up.com/">10up's Gutenberg resource hub</a>, several other future-facing WordPress sites sharing tools and knowledge catering to different audiences emerged in the last week or so:</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://olliewp.com/">Ollie</a> from <strong>Mike McAlister</strong> is shaping up to be &#8220;a blog where WordPress creators can get handy tips, tutorials, and tools for the WordPress block editor and full-site editing.&#8221; </li><li>A <a href="https://www.modernwpdev.co/">Modern WP Dev Course</a> is being offered by <strong>Joey Farrugio</strong> and will cover end-to-end WordPress site builds for SaaS and Enterprise clients. So far you can learn <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/create-acf-block">how to register and scaffold your ACF blocks through a CLI</a> along with a few other <a href="https://www.modernwpdev.co/lessons/">lessons in building ACF blocks</a>.</li><li><a href="https://wpturbo.dev/introducing-wpturbo/">WPTurbo</a> from <strong>Alex Borto</strong> offers more than <a href="https://wpturbo.dev/generators/">40 free WordPress code generators</a>, <a href="https://wpturbo.dev/snippets/">snippets saved by users</a>, and there's <a href="https://wpturbo.dev/blog/">a dev blog</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed7s5MFg_vs">Create Pro WordPress Page Layouts in Just 10 Minutes</a> from <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> is a fun video tour of some layout design fundamentals that are really essential for good results with full-site editing and the block editor's power and flexibility.</li></ul>



<p>And, last but not least —<a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-0-3-security-release/">WordPress 6.0.3 was released</a>. Update as soon as you can! WordPress 6.1 is just around the corner, and its a doozy. <strong>Dave Smith</strong> has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUrwyyw-8I">the highlights on new features in this fun video</a>.<br /></p>
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<div class="wp-container-48 wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<div class="wp-container-47 wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-color has-theme-palette-5-background-color has-text-color has-background" id="WP-Engine">
<div class="wp-container-45 wp-block-column">
<h3 class="has-theme-palette-9-color has-text-color" id="sponsor-wpengine"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/wordpress-vip">WordPress VIP</a></h3>



<p>Founded in 2006, WordPress VIP is <em>the</em> agile <a href="https://wpvip.com/enterprise-content-management-system/">content platform</a> that empowers marketers to build content both faster and smarter so they can drive more growth. We empower content and development teams with the flexibility and ubiquity of WordPress—the agile CMS that powers more than 40% of the web—while ensuring the security and reliability organizations need to operate at scale</p>
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<div class="wp-container-46 wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center">
<div id="WordPress-VIP" class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><a href="https://poststat.us/wordpress-vip"><img width="300" height="132" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WPVIPlogo-1-300x132.webp" alt="WordPress VIP" class="wp-image-99911" title="WordPress VIP" /></a>WordPress VIP</div>
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<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f44b.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /> Credits</h3>



<ul id="block-a3e9962f-97ca-4009-be8e-db47b5d1fddf"><li><a href="https://twitter.com/karks88">Eric Karkovack</a>, Owner at <a href="https://www.karks.com/">Eric Karkovack Web Design Services</a>&nbsp;(Twitter)</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dan_knauss">Dan Knauss</a><span>, Editor for </span><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a><span> (Twitter)</span></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a>, Web Producer intern for <a href="http://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a> (Twitter)</li></ul>
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<p class="has-background">Every week <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">Post Status Excerpt</a></strong> will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />You can listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">past episodes</a> of <strong>The Excerpt</strong>, <a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/">browse all our podcasts</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1m3xwXbe0MG5BzFVPtB0A7">Spotify</a>, Amazon Music, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://castro.fm/podcast/c53552c6-1ee0-4fc4-9de4-08ed6bf1ee4d">Castro</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://player.fm/series/wordpress-post-status-podcasts">Player.fm</a>, <a href="https://pca.st/05rR">Pocket Casts</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/">Simplecast</a>, or by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h1 id="h-transcript">Transcript</h1>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> So what's your top pick for important news of the week emerging, or I guess a lot of this stuff is going on continually, multi-week as we kind of think it over and conversations unroll. What's the top one on your mind?</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> I think the conversation around the removal of the active install growth data is just continuing, isn't it?</p>



<p>I mean, we're getting a lot of different points of view on it from developers, non-developers, and pretty much anyone else in the community who has an opinion on it.</p>



<p>[00:01:00]</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Definitely. I've been kind of pleased that it, you know, it settled down a bit and people are coming up with some pretty creative and constructive ideas of, um, well, just a lot of different perspectives on it. What did you think of Alex Denning's? He put out a newsletter last week, and I summarized some of that, and he put out a post. Um, now this week, um, that's not really surprising, but maybe a little sharply worded Stu um, kind of a bit of a, a shock to actually see it there that.</p>



<p>Yeah. How did you, how do you feel about that? Take that, that the freemium model is not one his marketing agency would recommend necessarily as much as they did previously.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Well, I mean, the good thing Alex did was he backed all that stuff up with numbers. I mean, he has charts. He's showing how hard it is right now for.</p>



<p>New plugin to get into the [00:02:00] repository and, you know, break through with either, I think you mentioned a hundred k, a 500 k or a million active installs. Now you see like the numbers of that just going down, uh, throughout the years. And, you know, that's kind of the issue the plugin repository has right now is that you have, you know, just a few really large plugins.</p>



<p>Um, you have. You know, plenty of them are, you know, related to automatic in some way. Um, and those are the ones getting, you know, the most visibility, at least when you're first visiting the, uh, the repository. So I think, you know, Alex makes a lot of sense and, you know, just kind of gave us an honest take of what the challenges are if you're trying to go with that model these days.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Right. Yeah, it's, it's definitely gotten to be. A tougher, um, tough market to break into. And yet some of his, um, important numbers come from [00:03:00] Ian Paulson. Um, uh, WP Trends put out some of that stuff too, that, um, probably the mix of, of consolidation in the market and, and just it's own maturity. Yeah. It's hard to debut and, and crack quickly into, into the upper tears.</p>



<p>I, I always look at, I always wonder what the exceptions are and there are some, and he did note, um, a few. And if, yeah, if you can bring other channels and other, other marketing, um, if you have a significant marketing empire or like, um, awesome motive, but even I think on a much smaller scale, it's, it's definitely gonna help.</p>



<p>Is this your only channel or, um, or, What did, um, what did you think of, of his take overall? You know, we have Matt Cromwell, um, kind of giving a, um, a counterpoint, [00:04:00] um, today. I saw that come out.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah, I mean, I, I think overall Alex makes a lot of good points. Um, you know, I'm not a plug-in developer myself. I'm not starting that business, but I could see.</p>



<p>You know, if five to 10 years ago, if you were to dream about, okay, I'm gonna create this plugin and it's going to kind of go viral within the community and people are going to pick up on it and use it, um, it, that's just not as realistic anymore. Um, you know, like I kind of referred to it on Twitter as like the wild west, um, you know, where anyone you could just, you know, start their own plot of virtual land and, you know, start selling and you.</p>



<p>Break through that market. Now you are, as you said, you're up against these companies with large marketing budgets. Um, they, they're very skilled at getting the word out about their products. So if you were going to do this just through the repository [00:05:00] and, you know, as an individual or small agency, I'm not sure, you know, you're gonna have a lot of success without just a major commitment and probably a little bit of luck and a great product.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Right. Yeah. His, um, his headline, um, Alex is, is the.org repo is ineffective for plugin distribution. You know, kinda generalization as of this, this year or so. Um, I would say that's, he's really saying ineffective as maybe a single channel for, for distribution. A freemium model rooted just in.org is a, i I would say that's always been, you know, why limit yourself?</p>



<p>You know, why not, Why not cultivate other, other channels? And, um, we've promoted partnerships a lot. A lot of people open up, um, other ways to get their, their plugin out by having hosting or agency partners that, um, make it easier. [00:06:00] Or required. It comes along with, with another product. Um, see Main WP is, um, packaged in with, at Tarm, which is packaged in with rocket.net.</p>



<p>That's a, that was an interesting development there. Um, veto on, on Twitter was proposing a number of things that would be useful to get from data that, um, Matt Mullenweg, um, said, Hm, these are, you know, he gave some positive signals about that. Um, did you catch.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> I did. Yeah. And I, I think something will come back eventually, um, you know, as to what that is and how long it'll take Will.</p>



<p>Mm-hmm. be interesting to see. But, you know, I, that kind of goes into, you know, what should they be providing to plugin developers and what should they, you know, what, what should anyone really expect about that? I'm sure that's something we're gonna kinda get on in a bit.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Right. Yes. Um, I've seen a lot of reasonable opinion just come that the [00:07:00] more and more to, let's do what dr.org does.</p>



<p>Just release all the raw data. Don't interpret it on.org maybe, but leave that to however people choose to use it. And, and you could do an opt-in, opt out if you don't want your, your, um, your metrics in the mix. You can opt out or privatize, you know, only I get those. But the aggregate, uh, signal coming out of there is of high interest to.</p>



<p>On a lot of levels to a lot of people, including researchers. Um, and as, as Alex mentions, I've said a lot, it's a data poor market and anyone who's curious in understanding it, uh, WordPress ecosystem, you want the, want the data, um, what you do with it, what you think it means is a whole, whole nother thing.</p>



<p>Um, and I think it seems like there's an agreement too, kind of a consensus emerging that, um, Actually that growth, that growth number isn't [00:08:00] or hasn't been, um, terribly useful. So it's sort of irrelevant to, um, on a lot of levels Alex would say, because it's, it's not gonna help you, um, in this market anyway.</p>



<p>Um, but, um, you know, there's, there's other more useful things we could potentially get out of there. Um, yeah, so Matt's, Matt's take, I think the, for both of us, those are the two. This dialogue is um, kind of the top of mind thing here. Um, did you get a chance to break into, think through Matt's comments today?</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah, so Matt Cromwell kind of gave a, a very respectful rebuttal to, uh, Alex Denning, um, which I like to see. Cuz you know, we can have those disagreements and you. And still talk about it rationally and, you know, uh, as community members and not as adversaries necessarily. So I think that that was the absolute right approach.</p>



<p>Um, so, you know, Matt kind of went [00:09:00] into the plugin repository search algorithm and says that, you know, if, if you go in there and optimize your product with the right name or, um, tag your product under, you know, relevant, uh, terms, You can still be found in the search engine. Um, it's not necessarily, um, that you're gonna have the immediate visibility.</p>



<p>Let's go going on the repository and, you know, seeing like, um, the classic editor or Yost or something like that. But you're going to be able to be found if you, if you optimize. And he also said that, you know, in his experience with plugins and he's worked with a few of 'em, give WPS the one that comes to mind.</p>



<p>Um, You can actually convert a lot more, uh, freemium users into, uh, paying customers than the one to 2% that, uh, Alex Denning was uh, mentioning in his post. So, uh, I, I think that's, you know, so he, he's actually lived it a [00:10:00] bit and I think that's, um, mm-hmm. , you know, very relevant, I think kind of good news for other people that are trying to break into</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> the.</p>



<p>Yeah, I've always thought that if you're using that model or any model, you should be doing everything you can as soon as you have any kind of audience to get in relationship with your best users. You know, figure u usually you'd have some kind of persona, you know, you, you know who your, your target audience is, and then maybe that revises over time as you, you get to actually know them.</p>



<p>But that's the best data you, you can get. Finding ways to develop that, um, that relationship is, um, is really key. There's then you, you kind of take control of your, you're not sitting back passively looking for a number to come in that might be dubious, um, is a big generalization. Um, can you get together a focus group or something like that?[00:11:00]</p>



<p>The, um, the thing that. I, I think, uh, resonated seems be resonated with a lot of people. With, with Matt's, is that that number you mentioned yet? Alex, Alex is speaking of, um, this, going through a lot of data. This is a general figure. This is the, the kind of conversion you can expect on a freemium plugin in, in the, um, what do you, uh, in the, in the.org repo.</p>



<p>And that's, that's an average. So, An average for 50, 60,000 possible. Um, I suppose I'm not, I'm not sure what the restricted, um, data set is that they're looking at. Maybe it's a little more targeted than that, but, um, you may not be the average. Do you want to be the average? Do you want, do you wanna market yourself and, and consider your, your success based on relative to, to an average?</p>



<p>Do you wanna do 200 [00:12:00] times better than that? Um, and I, I would say, yeah, shoot for that is, is, is that kind of where you, you see Matt, um, saying, Look, there's, there's plenty of ways to be an exception to this.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, one of the things he mentioned was, you know, it also depends on the category, the type of plugin you're in.</p>



<p>Mm-hmm. . If you're competing against the big SEO plugins or form plugins, for example, you're gonna have a hard time. There are a lot of established plugins out there that do these things and that have massive install numbers. Um, but if you have a great product that is in the right niche at the right time, there's no reason why you still can't have success.</p>



<p>Um, yeah, I mean, one to 2% is kind of low. Um, but that doesn't mean your particular plugin is going to have to settle for that. I mean, Regardless of where you put your plug in. And I, I think, um, both [00:13:00] gentlemen agreed that, you know, dot org is a lot different than it was a few years ago, But regardless of where you put that effort, you still have to put in a lot of work in order to get good results.</p>



<p>So, you know, Right. It, it's, you know, it ultimately it's up to the, to the developer, um, to market their product, to make a great product. And, you know, That, that's what's gonna lead to the results more than just, it's, it's home on the web basically.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Right? Yeah. There, it, it seems to me like there's a, there's an important perspective, um, shift that it's, it's worth, um, considering if there's kind of, there's a, there's a, you can look at at general.</p>



<p>Overall market numbers. You can try to look at how peers are doing within a certain trench there. And, and then there's the numbers you generate yourself and the, and it, it's somewhat, it [00:14:00] can be somewhat disempowering to, to get over occupied with, um, um, comparison to others. Um, just the whole psychology of that is that really doing well.</p>



<p>Um, Or do you wanna define your own? I remember when, um, like some years ago, MailChimp or people in the newsletter marketing, um, world posted, here's industry averages on open rates and click rates, and I don't know where exactly how they computed this. Um, uh, I think the ones coming from MailChimp are based on their data.</p>



<p>So, Okay, this is probably reliable. And then, and then some years later, I've, I've seen totally. Figures, but um, in reference to that, like, wow, we're consistently two, three, even four times over that. So great . But is there really any actionable, um, data in that there, there's such broad, um, broad [00:15:00] figures. What, what, what do you think are the useful, um, practical things coming out of this, out of this conversation?</p>



<p>I see Matt has some things that they agree. It is tougher these days. Um, the market has changed a lot. Um,</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> yeah, I, I, I just think it's, it's a long overdue conversation. It's kind of funny that it took this particular incident to kind of spark it, but mm-hmm. , you know, as I said, if you're starting a, uh, a plug-in business today, it's so much different than it was a few years ago.</p>



<p>You know, I, I think this could only benefit people in that position. Right now. They're, they're seeing both sides of the argument. They're seeing, you know, how they fit into, to what's happening out there in the WordPress community. So, you know, it, it's, it is very productive at the very least. And hopefully it leads to, you know, Some rethinking of the [00:16:00] statistics that really matter and that allow developers to make good</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> decisions.</p>



<p>Right? Yeah. Um, I'd, I'd really like to, I'm one of those who likes more data just to out of curiosity and analysis of, you know, understanding. The market as a whole, but when you're, when you're actually doing, making practical moves for your, your business, everyone's unique or different and, um, you know, or do you have a extension in the W commerce, uh, marketplace?</p>



<p>That's a growth area. Uh, that's, is that, do you have all your eggs in one basket? Um, everything that Matt says at the end, that's a practical tip is like kind of a no brainer, but you get distracted from that. Pretty easily by looking over your shoulder at another side, I suppose identify your niche should keep it focused.</p>



<p>Um, launch day one with your free and paid options. Focus on user experience and excellent customer [00:17:00] support. I think those are, those are really key and are under, under practiced, um, across the, the board, um, user experience all the way to plays well with others. How, you know, whether you're bombarding people with notifications to, to upsell them.</p>



<p>Um, there was, someone recently suggested a standard, um, a kind of industry, uh, standard way of doing that, that was part of the discussion. Um, maybe like the in line with WP Notify, What if we get to a consensus on, um, ways to reach. With freemium plugin plugins to, to the audience instead of all trying our own things inside the dashboard.</p>



<p>Is there anything else in that discussion or any other contributions to it that, um, you've been reflecting on this week? Any anyone else writing in [00:18:00] on it?</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah, I, I think you know, what you just mentioned about the notifications is interesting because we had, uh, You know, the post that Mark Zara, uh, had a couple of weeks ago about the marketing tactics, it kind of got me thinking about this data.</p>



<p>I mean, if you have accurate, actionable data, do you need to really go down the rabbit hole with some of these unsavory, I guess I'll call them marketing tactics, You know, if you had that access to the right data. You know, right now it's so open to experimentation because people may not exactly know what the right path is for them.</p>



<p>So they're going to experiment. They're always going to be developers who push the envelope when it comes to, you know, littering the dashboard and, and just making it, uh, uh, a difficult user experience, I guess I should say. Um, [00:19:00] maybe data is part of the way we solve. Yeah. I,</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> I, I think that that's a good, a good tangent for this to, to go in tho Those two seem related to me as well because they're, they're two parts of that transaction.</p>



<p>Um, they're due to the not having. Telemetry and you've gotta find some other way to reach out. And the easy, the low hanging fruit has seemed to be, well, let's put in a big, you must respond, you know, something where people are gonna click on it and, um, and respond. Um, but then there's all this pushback against that.</p>



<p>Other, other forms of marketing, like you've, you've mentioned, like Mark's mentioned, I should bring that up with him and see what his thoughts are since he's recently weighed in on both. And that that is ultimately though the user experience is where you get the, the pushback. Um, they want [00:20:00] someone using your plugin, um, may actually want to give you feedback.</p>



<p>Can you find an appropriate channel? It's such a, it's such a one way transaction. Um, yeah, I don't, it seems like there should be some opportunities there and if there was collaboration, In the plugin industry to, hey, this is how we're all gonna do this. If there was a cluster of, of people or, or one particular company or, um, a group that agreed, let's try this particular way of, um, standardizing how we do this part of the interface, how we reach out to customers.</p>



<p>And, um, I don't think we do anything as a community to set expectations at all or to educate people who are just casual users. And that cascades into them. Just, you know, never really entering more deeply into, into the WordPress project as maybe as much as they would. Um, [00:21:00] I wonder if there's lost opportunities there.</p>



<p>Um, that's a good one. The notification thing I is a pet issue for me too. No one likes it. . No. No. Well, the other, the other thing I was gonna. Mention ties in into your, your other pick too. You, you wrote a piece on what developers should expect from, um, from WordPress and, Yeah. What, Let me walk us through your, your main points there.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah. So, you know, with, with all the, the talk about the data being removed, that also kind of got me thinking of, well, you know, what is it that if I'm a plugin developer, what should I expect from the WordPress project? You know? And my conclusion is that I don't know that the WordPress project is necessarily interested in helping you make money off of your plugin.</p>



<p>You know? Mm-hmm. , they're providing us with a [00:22:00] platform. That we can build on. So there's the opportunity to make money, and they're offering us, you know, documentation and, you know, different events and things like that to help us learn, um, how we can use the platform for, for our needs. However, you know, when it gets to the point of, you know, are, are they in the market to help any big plugin developer make.</p>



<p>I mean, should they be, Is that something that. You know, we should reasonably expect them to care about, um, you know, like personally, I felt like the data that was there, they should have done a, a much better job in explaining why it was removed. Because I think that is the part of it that gets people fired up the most perhaps, is that there's just no explanation for it.</p>



<p>There's no official word. You know, there's a, a rumor here and there. In, when you look at it [00:23:00] in, in a, uh, broader view, is that data something that WordPress owes to plug in developers necessarily? Right. So that was kind of my point as to, you know, Yes, we've missed this data and it could be useful, but we also have to realize that every one of these plug-in developers is a third party entity.</p>



<p>Many of them are commercial, including automatic, and so. , you know, are we going to expect WordPress to facilitate our money making? You know, that's ultimately up to the company. That's up to the developer, right? Um, they're giving us the tool to build upon and you know, we take it from there. And that's right kind of where it ends.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Exactly. Um, yeah, it's a bit of a humbling message, but I, I think it's, it's an over overdue one. And, and maybe that's actually a good, explicit conversation to [00:24:00] have. What, what should, what should the project set as expectations? Um, can those be explicitly laid out, um, to people who are in the extender category of, you know, building plugins and themes and services?</p>



<p>Um, you, you often, You know, Des describing. The very large realm of third party, um, businesses built around WordPress, um, describing them as, as super fans, um, is, is an interesting thing. I I, I kind of had a chuckle out of, because I, I think there's another side of that perspective where it's like, you know, with friends like these, you , like this is the, the people who.</p>



<p>You know, con, you know, everyone, everyone who's had some success or prominence in, in the market, there's a, there's a strong tendency towards maybe conveying, you know, especially if you're Twitter, active personality, God's gift to, uh, [00:25:00] to WordPress and expanding the market here and well from, um, from other, other perspectives.</p>



<p>Compared to other projects, testing performance is, uh, something that a lot of third party, uh, products have delegated upward to hosts to deal with. Um, it's not just WordPress core, although that's there, but, um, the tightening focusing in on performance now, I, I think is really important. But it's something that, um, you know, unlike other projects, Testing is not as, um, aggressively implemented or standardized, um, across the board.</p>



<p>You can get stuff in the, in the repo without, you know, necessarily doing, you know, end to end deep testing of, um, for security and performance. And I think any, anything, any developments on [00:26:00] that front are, are to be encouraged. There's. That's ongoing. But, um, if, if plugin developers really took charge of that, um, that's an area that there's clear.</p>



<p>Clear synergy and, uh, alignment of interest with e everybody. And I think that's where everyone benefits. Um, you, you may not be owed anything, but um, for your, for your, your contributions, but everyone benefits when, when those are good, when, uh, when everyone's kind of aligned and, and, uh, performance and, and security are, are ones where just absolutely everyone is.</p>



<p>In, in it together? No, no one, um, everyone has an interest in, in everything performing as well as possible and being as secure as possible. So that, that kind of touches the, um, the other thing I wanted to bring up, which is one of our own, um, back in August, [00:27:00] I, uh, recorded a, a conversation with Tell Chris, um, who's Object Cash Pro and is working on a success.</p>



<p>Product, Um, and has had huge success with a high value hosting market. Partnerships with, with that, he has a freemium plugin that is also super valuable. That is originally from a forked product of, um, I think some core, core developers quite some time back about a decade, um, that they, they established and then left and, and till took over.</p>



<p>Um, with his own, his own versions, he has over a hundred thousand. Installs tracked on the on the.org repo with that. But his premium product, which actually is not open source to protect, to protect it as intellectual property, um, that is where you get the big, the bigger revenue from fewer clients [00:28:00] because it appeals to hosts who have such, or anyone who has such a high volume of traffic paying you a thousand bucks.</p>



<p>Uh, a month. Is saving me 20 20,000 on the bandwidth that, so it, it's kind of, um, it's a, it's a really fascinating model that I think doesn't translate to everybody. It's a niche product, but there are lessons from it that really do, and it's how can I build something that's so tested rigorously and so performant that I don't have more than like five minutes of support time a day.</p>



<p>All plugin developers complain, , plugin, plugin businesses are complain about support. So amazing relationship there with kind of sell itself and, and two, this is coming from someone who is self taught, I believe, largely self taught developer who then spent time outside of WordPress in Lve and got deeply into performance and, and testing and brings a [00:29:00] rigor from that project back to WordPress, which is sad.</p>



<p>Not common and not part of the culture and not intensely supported and taught. Um, so I, I think those are things plugin developers can look to and, and learn from. I don't know if you had a chance to listen to that. I, I actually did more writing about, about that conversation the more I thought about it than I usually do.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah. Hi. His story is very interesting and I said going to the hosting market. Is really unique. No, I mean, how many WordPress plugins are really doing that? And I think what he shows is that there are still opportunities. If you have something that is very niche that you don't have to necessarily even worry about the plugin repo so much.</p>



<p>Right.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Yeah. And it's partly an opportunity that's been, it's very stereotypical. It goes back a long way. It's an [00:30:00] structural feature of, of WordPress culture and, and software engineering. Um, he's solving a problem that exists because WordPress. Is is not super competitive on the performance front. More and more, that's more and more an issue at time, uh, over time.</p>



<p>So it's being more aggressively dealt with now. Uh, but a large part of that, I remember 10, 15 years ago, you know, hosts, it was like a glass half full glass, half empty. Everyone's installing WordPress and 250 plugins, and some of them are nuts, . And it's like it brings it to a crawl. Um, so there's been this huge boom.</p>



<p>Managed WordPress hosting and really to cater with that to, to that. Um, and I think, and it's not just that all P h p MyQ, um, CMS platforms that got popular around the same time, you, you can, you [00:31:00] know, left to your own devices someone can install and quite a lot of stuff on there and. That's never, performance, hasn't been pushed to as a core competency and responsibility of third party developers in, in WordPress.</p>



<p>And I think that's really overdue and is hugely in their interest and until has a, a winning product because it matters so much at scale. Um, and that's another, that's another thing if your plugin doesn't. Doesn't, wasn't conceived of and architected towards, towards scale. Well you, are you going to be able to market this, um, in a higher tier?</p>



<p>Is this something that a V I P agency is gonna do code review and say, you know, we like this future set, but, um, you know, uh, uh, this is gonna, here are, here are issues with security, [00:32:00] performance and so on. I think that sort of. That sort of barrier is there and maybe not talked about as much as, as it should.</p>



<p>There's a lot of learning, um, that could happen there that's constructive. Um, if you're going for a middle or low market, maybe you don't think about that as much, but there's a lot of high dollar value in having, having something that is going to be adopted by high value market.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah. I mean, if you make yourself indispensable to, uh, Larger installs.</p>



<p>I think you could find yourself, uh, doing pretty well in this space. But, you know, talking about performance, I mean, there's really not a lot of formal educational opportunities out there right now for that. Um, you know, and the kind of the. Blessing and curse of programming is that you can build things more than one way.</p>



<p>You know, if you ask me to build you a form, I can build you a form in many different ways. [00:33:00] Doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be the most performant. Um, and you know, if there's no real standard or there's nobody sitting there and, you know, testing all of these things, um, before they get into repository.</p>



<p>You're, you could be stuck with something that you know isn't very performant and, you know, the average site owner's not going to know that there are faster, better alternatives. So that's kind of the, the, uh, the challenge we find ourselves in right now.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Yeah, I've, I've said before, somewhat, you know, half serious, you know, that I would love to see statistics on, you know, what's the average amount of, of queries, queries that this.</p>



<p>Plugin will add to my site if I install it. And is it arbitrarily loading dependencies and, and adding, adding page weight on, um, absolutely every page load? Or is it just doing that where it needs to? There there are [00:34:00] things like that that, um, I think public attention to would, would have a, be. Impact. Um, it just hasn't, hasn't really been considered.</p>



<p>Do you have a third, uh, third item or, or was the Alex and, and Matt, the kind of counting his too. Did, Is there one more? Um, Pick of the week for</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> you? Well, I, I, I think, uh, I was really interested in, in looking at, uh, 10 UPS Gutenberg best practices site, cuz that kind of ties into this a little bit with the education.</p>



<p>Here's a very big agency, does a lot of, um, large WordPress based projects and they're kind of sharing their methods for building Gutenberg blocks, for working with block themes and the theme json file. Um, and you know, maybe that's one of our solutions community. Mm-hmm. members that have had success and have a reputation for quality sharing, how they do things.</p>



<p>I know web dev [00:35:00] studios has done similar things in the past where if you can kind of see how they do things, maybe that rubs off on other developers and they also, you know, build things to be performant and sustainable. Um, you know, that's the kind of information I think is, is really just crucial to have cuz it goes beyond just the basic documentation that WordPress</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> provides.</p>



<p>Yeah, absolutely. I, I've, um, I was pleased to see that come out. I've kind of been looking for that for years. I was like, you know, knowing that's kind of a bellwether, you know, we'll have turned a corner when, when you see the, um, top agencies, uh, turning. Um, case studies, documentation, tutorials, explainers that are, are really useful and, and helpful, but are also signaling, hey, they've, they've turned the corner on that.</p>



<p>They are, they're doing Gutenberg first, um, with, with new, new site builds. Um, [00:36:00] and I, I think I, I've never seen anyone mention this, but. I, I feel that there's a, um, there's a need there. Maybe there isn't enough of a hunger for, for unofficial standards. Uh, when, when back, way back when managed hosting, um, started to come out and, um, I remember WP Engine was, I think the, the first I recall where there was a public list of do of plugins.</p>



<p>Don't allow or, Yeah. Um, and I was like, Cool. That saves me a lot of time, . And I, I kept up with that and I kind of, I aligned my own lists with that and, and tried to learn, Okay, why is that? And to kind of sharpen my own understanding of. How experts are, are picking and screening and you know, you look at, um, WordPress v i p documentation, I, I've done that from time time.</p>



<p>Well, what is their [00:37:00] perspective on, on ACF or, um, or, or something else that, uh, I, I don't, I don't know that that's done at. People who are serving a kind of lower middle market and who can count on, let's just, we'll just throw more server horsepower on that, that will be the client's problem. Um, there are, there are leaders who build the topnotch, you know, flagship sites out there.</p>



<p>You know, everyone always mentions White house.org, which used to be, which was a big brag for Duple back in the day. That was, it was originally a droople site. And if we're going to recognize leadership and leaders like that, then I think what comes along with that is, is taking the best practices at standards seriously, and hopefully seeing more of those come out.</p>



<p>So there was a 10 up one, and then I also noticed really all at the same time. So Mike McAllister has, um, Launched Ollie, [00:38:00] um, WordPress tutorials and tools that are really focused on the future of the block editor and full site editing. Um, and there were a couple of others that, um, that popped out. Do you know Alex, the WP Marmite?</p>



<p>Um, I don't really, I don't know them that well,</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> but, uh, that one I, no, I, I, I don't know Alex very well. Um, I've heard, I've heard of WP Marmite, but I.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> I've looked over there a few times. I noticed I, it is like, wow, this is a trend in the, in the last seven to 10 days. Um, new tutorial sites being launched that he has one on per, I think it's a performance.</p>



<p>Um, have to look back up, up in here. W p Turbo. Um, yeah, which has got, uh, code generators, short code generators, um, familiar things from the past, but, um, gear. Um, reminds me to generate wp, um, or what was that site called? Um, I think that was [00:39:00] it. It, this, yeah, where you can, but it's, it's got a tutorial component too.</p>



<p>So, uh, kind of updating those things for, um, performance and the future of. Of the word press editor, um, Jamie Marclin put out a nice, uh, video on how to build quality page layouts in just 10 minutes. right is his, uh, sales line there, which is, which actually there, it, it's not easy to make things look good.</p>



<p>I mean, you need layout, You need to learn some layout, design, skill, basics. Make hash in, um, any kind of , any kind of page builder. And I think people turning to focus on those, um, on those things is a really good sign.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, it's, you know, we have great tools and some, some tools don't require us to write code, but you still have to have some fundamental skills in place mm-hmm.</p>



<p>before you can [00:40:00] really have success with them. And I think you know it, I mean, Elementor is a great product, but it doesn't necessarily make you a designer by trade. No. Um, just from installing it, I mean, there, there, there's, you still have to put in a little bit of work. So these kind of sites are, are nice.</p>



<p>To have because you, those references, you know, can help you become better at what you're doing. Right?</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Yeah. And, um, on that note, um, the WordPress, WordPress 6.1 is looking like a really, you're gonna be a really cool release. And I noted that. Um, yeah. WordPress, v i p put out a, what they called hot takes, um, on, um, On the value of, of what's, what's in, um, what's in 6.1.</p>



<p>That should be noted by, um, their, their audience, their clientele. So I'm, I'm, I'm interested in, in that often, like, you're, Okay, so this is directed towards, towards their [00:41:00] clients. This is, you know, very different than the, the, you know, the, um, The broad, mid middle market. Um, and they're, they're focusing on things like constraints, you know, that you can lock lock blocks, um, which is huge.</p>



<p>I, you know, you only, I, I've only heard agency people and, and freelancers, anyone dealing with clients talking about, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You've got reusable block. You know, we've all found ways probably to new car work by. With reusable blocks that aren't, aren't locked down or, um, uh, even see Brian Cords mentioned something I've, I've done a few times, although I, I had revisions turned on so I could, I could go back.</p>



<p>But it's, um, it's quite easy to have a second tab open and forget you've made changes in this other tab and then, you know, wipe them out or, or something like that. There's a lot, there's a lot of little ways. So many more [00:42:00] options in, in Gutenberg can, um, frustrate people whose time, you know, that are, you don't want your clients foundering in, in these kinds of things.</p>



<p>Um, so that, that to me is a good sign too, that we're, we're looking at constraints as, as a positive.</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> Yeah, I mean in the old days we went to great lengths to, to lock things away from clients and now Gutenberg kind of takes that away, when it came out it's like, okay, well now they have access to everything and they can do freak all sorts of havocs.</p>



<p>So the ability to lock things down is, you know, is, is key for the future, I think.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> Anything else we should throw on the, on the, on the deck or,</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> I think that was about it. Busy week.</p>



<p><strong>Dan Knauss:</strong> No, it seems not. Not, not. No one got acquired. No major, huge business things, but, um, and still trying to digest the [00:43:00] implications of all, all the new, uh, w w commerce, hosted w commerce platforms that are, are rolling out.</p>



<p>Um, that's, that's a big deal. Uh, but yeah, another time another conversation all. Well, thanks for, uh, thanks for joining me again, and we can, uh, do a few more roundups like this, uh,</p>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack:</strong> now and then. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 15:45:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Dan Knauss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"WPTavern: WordPress Themes Directory Adds Style Variation Previews";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=138816";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-directory-adds-style-variation-previews";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3070:"<p>WordPress.org theme previews just got a major improvement this week with the addition of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/10/20/displaying-style-variations-for-supporting-themes/">Style Variation previews</a>. The previews now appear on block themes that include style variations. </p>



<img />



<p>Themes that have more variations than what fits in the space beneath the preview pane will display all variations in a carousel with little arrows to navigate to the next ones. Here&#8217;s an example with the Pixl theme from Automattic that contains seven brightly colored variations:</p>



<img />



<p>It&#8217;s also possible to see a selected style variation loaded into the theme preview now. Clicking the &#8216;Preview&#8217; button will allow users to scroll and explore the theme with their selected style variation applied.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;These style variations, designed by theme authors and packaged in block themes, help users have a diverse set of approaches to their site design allowing them to find one that aligns with their goals,&#8221; Automattic-sponsored Meta team contributor Steve Dufresne said. &#8220;This feature helps to highlight the flexibility of modern WordPress themes and it’s time to have it baked into the theme directory experience.&#8221;</p>



<p>The new style variation previews are fetched from the themes&#8217; <code>/styles/{variation_name}.json</code> files, so theme authors do not have to do anything to make the previews work. They will automatically display for any theme that includes style variations.</p>



<p>Meta team contributors are also working on adding the ability to filter the directory for themes with style variations. Dufresne proposed creating a new <code>style-variations</code> theme tag as the simplest route towards implementing this.</p>



<p>&#8220;Doing so will allow the active filtering of these themes without needing to make many if any code changes,&#8221; he said in the <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6545">ticket</a>&#8216;s description.</p>



<p>&#8220;A longer-term solution should look at exposing these features visibly somehow without needing to find the obscured filters that we currently have. This feature should be judged equally with others and therefore, this type of implementation should be better debated and falls out of the scope of this ticket and the immediate need to see themes with style variations.&#8221;</p>



<p>This is a good observation, as not all WordPress users hunting for themes will know that a tag exists in the Feature Filter. That list is already quite lengthy and not the best user experience for discovering themes with specific features, especially if users don&#8217;t understand what the terms mean.  Theme authors will want to watch this <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6545">ticket</a>. If the shorter term solution of creating a new <code>style-variations</code> tag is committed, they will need to update their themes with the tag to be included in the filtering.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 15:31:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"Post Status: Connect freemium plugins to premium extension sales?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=141363";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"https://poststatus.com/connect-freemium-plugins-to-premium-extension-sales/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4532:"<div class="wp-container-55 wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Justin Labadie's wishlist for the WordPress.org plugin repo: <br /><br />1) Ensure all search results are relevant. <br />2) Standardize a Premium product upsell interface. <br />3) Make it possible to show other products by the same author.  </p></div>


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<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">32</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
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<p class="has-drop-cap"><strong>Justin Labadie</strong> from <a href="http://slickremix.com/">SlickRemix</a> left <a href="https://poststatus.com/two-key-questions-we-need-to-answer/#comment-492939">a helpful comment</a> that adds an interesting idea to the mix of possible futures for the wordpress.org plugin repository. </p>



<h2>Search results should show peer products, not totally unrelated ones</h2>



<p>Confirming <a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/the-case-for-the-wordpress-plugin-freemium-model/">some problems</a> <strong>Matt Cromwell</strong> has noted about the repository's search algorithm, Justin describes how he and his brother <strong>Spencer Labadie</strong> had a plugin there that was &#8220;stacked in the search [results]&#8221; with unrelated plugins showing much higher active installs. Nothing the Labadies tried changed this outcome, so &#8220;After many hours, a few years, and &#8230; little to no growth no matter the hours or money&#8221; they decided to get out of the repo. </p>



<h2 id="h-standardize-what-works-for-freemium-premium-plugins-upsells-in-the-back-end">Standardize what works for freemium/premium plugins: Upsells in the back end</h2>



<p>At the same time, Justin says &#8220;almost every free install was a premium extension sale of some kind,&#8221; so they were definitely getting value from the plugin repository and freemium model but on the strength of their own product and sales funnel. </p>



<p>&#8220;With our main plugin we have ways we hook people into purchasing our premium extensions,&#8221; Justin commented. He says there should be &#8220;a standardized way for free plugins to do this.&#8221; Why not standardize what works well?</p>



<p>How it could look:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>I imagine a hook [where] users installing plugins see extensions offered by the plugins/themes. If we standardize something clean and not overly spammy-looking where devs can hook into that [and] show users what they offer that is premium&#8230;. Not a “Premium plugins store” but simply a page or way to display offerings within the repo that users can choose to click see that would take them to place to purchase. There would also be a similar and standardized way of hooking into displaying [upsells] on the [end user's] WordPress install’s backend.</p></blockquote>



<p>In other words, some kind of &#8220;Here's what else we offer&#8221; page or panel would come up during the installation process on each site.</p>



<h2>Make it easy to find everything contributed by each author or company</h2>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<img width="752" height="419" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Screen-Shot-2022-10-21-at-7.42.57-AM-752x419.webp" alt="" class="not-transparent wp-image-141397" />This is the only place in the plugin repository where you might (possibly) find all the plugins by a single author/vendor.</div>


<p>Currently, it's not easy or even truly possible to display all the plugins by a single author in the repo. If they are the only author, or if their account is connected to all their plugins in the repo (and many aren't), it is only possible to see all those plugins together on the authors' own profile pages under their Contribution History's &#8220;Plugins&#8221; tab. Company/owner pages that list all contributors and all company products — including themes — would do the most to help WordPress businesses using the repository.</p>



<p></p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 21 Oct 2022 13:58:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Dan Knauss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:33:03 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:15:29 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 2";s:16:"content-encoding";s:4:"gzip";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20211221010300";}