


<p>I’ve found in one way or another that I have always lived technology-adjacent. When I was a kid my family had a Super Nintendo in the house which I always loved playing Super Mario World on– this device was essentially my first step into computers before we got our first home computer in the house when I was around 6 years old. By age 10, our computer was connected to AOL dial-up, which then allowed me to explore the early internet more deeply– MIRC, Livejournal, AOL Games, Neopets, MySpace… you name it. For the first time my world expanded beyond my immediate home of Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and El Paso, TX and into the interconnected world of the web.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Due to this opportunity of early access to computers, I became proficient in typing and navigating the internet at a very young age. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>From what I’ve described so far, one would think that I was on track for a technology-related degree; however, there weren’t any people in my family or immediate network of friends who held a position in tech– so the idea that the computer could become a tool to propel my career didn’t really click until after graduating college.</p>



<p>A slight detour– I’m a Social-Anthropologist by trade, having graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a Bachelor’s in East Asian Studies and a minor in Japanese. Following my passion for Japan and inter-cultural studies, I moved back to Tokyo after college and it was about one year later when I landed my first job as a Product Manager for a mobile gaming company called Cocone. This was my reintroduction to the idea that I could have a technology-driven career.</p>



<p>In between working at Cocone and my return to the United States in 2016 I held a couple jobs that were not necessarily reliant on strong technical knowledge such as English Teacher, Executive Assistant, and even working at a karaoke bar. What my time as a Product Manager taught me, however, is that I do have a large thirst for working in the technology space so when I moved back to the States I applied to a Digital Agency called ASA Digital to get me back into that space.</p>



<p>After a year at ASA Digital being a sort of Jack of all trades on projects that included mobile apps, web apps, websites, MR/ER/VR/AR, I knew that this was the right choice for me. Sometimes when you know you know, and when I moved on from ASA Digital to Automattic I was fully embracing my love for and need to have technology in my life.</p>



<h2 id="h-diversity-equity-inclusive-and-belonging">Diversity, Equity, Inclusive, and Belonging</h2>



<p>I haven’t always been aware of what the world now collectively calls DEIB, but since I was little I disliked the idea of injustice and lies. I have also faced adversity in the past due to who I am and what I look like, and it never sits right with me when others are in this kind of predicament as well. Due to this, DEIB practices deeply impacted my values and how I show up to work and with other people.</p>



<p>It wasn’t until around 2019 that I became more involved in the world of DEIB in an official capacity at Automattic or at the incluu, LLC (a woman-owned and operated consultancy specializing in DEIB-thoughtful product strategy and advisement), and this is when I further developed this lens by participating in webinars on various DEIB topics, taking on leadership roles in the space, and keeping my eyes open to not only injustices that are happening but how they are being responded to.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The principles behind DEIB affect everyone and every aspect of our daily lives in some capacity, and embracing this space more fully not only allowed me to better understand the many systemic practices at play that keep us all from moving forward positively, but it also opened my mind to the real needs of people all over the world.&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Everyone deserves to live in a world or operate in a space with dignity and mutual respect.</p>



<h2 id="h-community-building">Community Building</h2>



<p>While I can understand the intent around the phrase “don’t mix friend groups”, I was never the type to follow this social role wholeheartedly. There are many times in our lives when we are put in situations where we interact with people we wouldn’t necessarily have engaged with such as school projects, clubs, sports, work, etc., and while it’s not all the time, sometimes a positive reaction can occur and we can meet someone new and interesting through these random groupings.</p>



<p>I’m not quick to make friends, but when I do create a strong friendship it is because we share values and experiences which serve as the foundation for our relationship despite any other differences. Maybe it’s because of my (still ongoing) gaming days, but I tend to visualize people in the world as a character with a rich background story and something only they can bring to the table.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>It has always brought me joy to bring people together and see how these chain reactions occur. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>It could be that by some happenstance one of the friends is recruiting, they share a similar hobby, or come from a similar background. Facilitating safe spaces where folks can develop a sense of community has always been a passion of mine.</p>



<p>I have had the pleasure of building community in the WordPress community through various outlets like <a href="https://blackpresswp.com/">BlackPress</a>, with the Training Team, and even in Automattic’s Black employee resource group Cocoamattic.</p>



<h2 id="h-the-outcome">The Outcome</h2>



<p>Early last year I applied for the Community Education Manager with a basic idea based off of the job description of what I would be doing– fast forwarding to today I have found that the three pillars shared above gave me the tools I need to perform in this role successfully.</p>



<p>As a Community Education Manager I work to break down perceived barriers for folks who want to contribute to the Make WordPress Training Team’s goals, and work as a close partner with the Training Team Representatives and members to empower them to excel in their leadership, goals, and strategy. I also help shepherd the Faculty Program, and therefore work to enable these folks to fully own and participate in their roles.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>When working with our contributors, I focus on building relationships, encouraging engagement, and enabling contributions. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>We have contributors from all over the world, so I also take care to be mindful of any language or cultural differences that may be at play and lean in with curiosity to better understand each community’s unique needs.</p>



<p>When working with our Team Reps, I similarly focus on building relationships, and work with them (not for them) to create an environment where the goals of the team can be realized.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Lastly, I work with our Faculty Program Members by building relationships and connecting them with work related to their role, and with contributors who can benefit from their expertise and mentorship.</p>



<p>Can you see how my pillars are directly impacting and influencing the work I currently do?</p>



<h2 id="h-exploring-your-own-foundational-pillars">Exploring Your Own Foundational Pillars</h2>



<p>There are probably many articles with thought-provoking exercises that can lead you in your own self-reflection, so I’ll leave you all with just a some questions from me that have worked to get me started:</p>



<ul>
<li>What have you been given positive feedback on lately?</li>



<li>What actions/things bring you the most joy in life?</li>



<li>What actions/things make you feel motivated?</li>



<li>When was the last time you found yourself “in the zone”?</li>
</ul>



<p>As you go through the questions for yourself don’t discredit or try to change your initial thoughts.</p>



<p>Using these as a starting point, even if what comes up doesn&#8217;t immediately surface something that could be a pillar, you’ll surely learn or get to acknowledge something about yourself that shapes your character and how you present in the world.</p>



<p>Take your time with it– the way we walk through life is a long-term journey which is constantly being updated by new experiences along the way.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com/essays/reflecting-on-my-3-foundational-pillars/">Reflecting on My 3 Foundational Pillars</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:"Tue, 17 Jan 2023 23:00:08 +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:"Destiny Kanno";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:89:"Do The Woo Community: Accepting Cryptocurrency in a WooCommerce Store with Lauren Dowling";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=74258";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:53:"https://dothewoo.io/cryptocurrency-woocommerce-store/";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:521:"<p>Lauren Dowling, lead product for Coinbase commerce joins returning guest Dave Lockie from Automattic as the conversation covers accepting cryptocurrency on WooCommerce shops, whether it be for your clients sites or your own.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/cryptocurrency-woocommerce-store/">Accepting Cryptocurrency in a WooCommerce Store with Lauren Dowling</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, 17 Jan 2023 11:06:00 +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: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:79:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 47: Letter from the Executive Director";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:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=14175";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:81:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/episode-47-letter-from-the-executive-director/";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:8660:"<p>On episode forty-seven of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her vision and current thinking for the WordPress open source project in 2023. <em>Rather read it? <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/letter-from-wordpress-executive-director-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The full letter is also available</a>.</em></p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



<p>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/">Santana Inniss</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



<p><a href="http://make.WordPress.org/core">make.WordPress.org/core</a><br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-2/">Join the 6.2 Release!</a><br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/08/suggest-topics-for-the-2023-wordpress-community-summit/">Submit Topics for the Community Summit!</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-14175"></span>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about why WordPress. For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is always knowing which lens to answer through. Though I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer, I know that I often speak as an advocate for many types of WordPressers.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So as we prepare ourselves for the start of a new year, I have a few additional thoughts that I&#8217;d like to share with you, my WordPress community, to take into the year with you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Firstly, the Four Freedoms. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my take on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides.</p>



<p>But if you didn&#8217;t, then the TL;DR on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that I really think should just be a given. But there are a couple of other things about the Four Freedoms, and especially the way that WordPress does this kind of open source-y thing that I think are worth noting as well.</p>



<p>One of those things is that WordPress entrepreneurs, those who are providing services or designing sites, building applications, they have proven that open source provides an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you aren&#8217;t allowed to build a business using free and open source software, and I am regularly heartened by the way that successful companies and freelancers make the effort to pay forward what they can.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:02]</strong></p>



<p>Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, of course, but often for the general benefit of folks who are also learning how to be entrepreneurs or how to kind of navigate our ecosystem. And the other thing that I love about the Four Freedoms and the way that WordPress does it is that leaders in the WordPress community, no matter where they are leading from, have shown that open source ideals can be applied to the way we work with one another and show up for one another.</p>



<p>As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an us-versus-the-problem exercise, which not only makes our solutions better, it also makes our community stronger.&nbsp;</p>



<p>As I have witnessed all of these things work together over the years, one thing that is clear to me is this: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, but open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:01]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>The second big thing that I want to make sure you all take into the year with you is that we are preparing for the third phase of the Gutenberg project. We are putting our backend developer hats on and working on the APIs that power our workflows. That workflows phase will be complex. A little bit because APIs are dark magic that binds us together, but also because we&#8217;re going to get deep into the core of WordPress with that phase.</p>



<p>If you want to have impactful work for future users of WordPress, though, this is the phase to get invested in. This phase will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn&#8217;t really make sense to you, I totally get it. Think of it this way, this phase will work on built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and things like programmable editorial, pre-launch checklists.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So phases one and two of the Gutenberg project had a very ‘blocks everywhere’ sort of vision. And phase three and, arguably, phase four will have more of a ‘works with the way you work’ vision.</p>



<p>And my final thought for you all as we head into the year is this, there are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was State of the Word 2013, where Matt dreamed on stage of a true WYSIWYG editor for WordPress. Some say it was State of the Word 2016, where we were all encouraged to learn JavaScript deeply. For a lot of us though, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2018 when the Gutenberg feature plugin first made its way to the repo.</p>



<p>No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like it&#8217;s been a long time because it has been a long time. But I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>For early adopters, both to the creation of Gutenberg as well as its use, hyperfocus on daily tasks makes it really hard to get a concept of scale.</p>



<p>And so I encourage everyone this year to look out toward the horizon a bit more and up toward our guiding stars a bit more as well. Because we are now, as we ever were, securing opportunity for those who come after us because of the opportunity that was secured for us by those who came before us.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:33]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>That brings us now to our small list of big things. It&#8217;s a very small list, but two pretty big things. The first thing on the list is that the WordPress 6.2 release is on its way. If you would like to get started contributing there, you can wander over to make.WordPress.org/core. You can volunteer to be part of the release squad. You can volunteer your time just as a regular contributor, someone who can test things &#8212; any of that.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>We&#8217;ll put a link in the show notes. And the second thing that I wanted to remind you of is that today is the deadline to submit topics for the Community Summit that&#8217;s coming up in August. That comes up in the middle of August, like the 22nd and 23rd or something like that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We&#8217;ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you already have chatted with a team rep about some things that you really want to make sure get discussed at the community summit, I think that we can all assume that your team rep has put that in. But if not, it never hurts to give it a second vote by putting a new submission into the form.</p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</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, 16 Jan 2023 12:00:00 +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:"Santana Inniss";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:69:"WordPress.org blog: Letter from WordPress’ Executive Director, 2022";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=14180";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:81:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/letter-from-wordpress-executive-director-2022/";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:5901:"<p>Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about &#8220;Why WordPress.&#8221; For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is knowing which lens to answer through. The reasons that a solopreneur will choose WordPress are different than the reasons a corporation would. And while artists and activists may have a similar vision for the world, their motivations change their reasons, too. That&#8217;s why I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer because I know that I am speaking as an advocate for many types of WordPressers. I have a few other reasons, too, which you may not be aware of as you use our software every day.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why WordPress?</h2>



<p>Most importantly, the Four Freedoms of Open Source. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my thoughts on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides. If you didn’t, then the tl;dr on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that should be a given. There&#8217;s an extent to which the idea of owning your content and data online is a radical idea. So radical, even, that it is hard for folks to grasp what we mean when we say &#8220;free as in speech, not free as in beer.&#8221; Securing an open web for the future is, I believe, a net win for the world especially when contrasted to the walled gardens and proprietary systems that pit us all against one another with the purpose of gaining more data to sell.</p>



<p>A second reason is that WordPress entrepreneurs (those providing services, designing sites, and building applications) have proven that open source offers an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you cannot build a business using free and open source software. And I am regularly heartened by the way successful companies and freelancers make an effort to pay forward what they can. Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, but often for the general benefit of folks learning how to be an entrepreneur in our ecosystem. Because despite our competitive streaks, at the end of the day, we know that ultimately we are the temporary caretakers of an ecosystem that has unlocked wealth and opportunity for people we may never meet but whose lives are made infinitely better because of us.</p>



<p>And the final reason is that leaders in the WordPress community (team reps, component maintainers, and community builders) have shown that open source ideals can be applied to how we work with one another. As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an “us vs. the problem” exercise, which not only makes our solutions better and our community stronger. And our leaders—working as they are in a cross-cultural, globally-distributed project that guides or supports tens of thousands of people a year—have unparalleled generosity of spirit. Whether they are welcoming newcomers or putting out calls for last-minute volunteers, seeing the way that they collaborate every day gives me hope for our future.</p>



<p>As I have witnessed these three things work together over the years, one thing is clear to me: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress in 2023</h2>



<p>As we prepare for the third phase of the Gutenberg project, we are putting on our backend developer hats and working on the APIs that power our workflows. Releases during Phase 3 will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t make sense, think of built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and programmatic editorial and pre-launch checklists.</p>



<p>If Phases 1 and 2 had a &#8220;blocks everywhere&#8221; vision, think of Phase 3 with more of a “works with the way you work” vision.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In addition to this halfway milestone of starting work on Phase 3, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/" target="_blank">WordPress also hits the milestone of turning 20 years old</a>. I keep thinking back to various milestones we&#8217;ve had (which you can read about in the second version of the Milestones book) and realized that almost my entire experience of full-time contributions to WordPress has been in the Gutenberg era.</p>



<p><em>I hear some of you already thinking incredulous thoughts so, come with me briefly.</em></p>



<p>There are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was at State of the Word 2013 when Matt dreamed of &#8220;a true WYSIWYG&#8221; editor for WordPress. Some say it was at State of the Word 2016 where we were encouraged to &#8220;learn Javascript deeply.&#8221; For many of us, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2017 when the Gutenberg demo first made its way on stage.</p>



<p>No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like a long time because it has been a long time. I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator. For early adopters (both to the creation of Gutenberg and its use), hyper-focus on daily tasks makes it hard to get a concept of scale.</p>



<p>So I encourage you this year to look out toward the horizon and up toward our guiding stars. We are now, as we ever were, securing the opportunity for those who come after us, because of the opportunity secured by those who came before us.</p>



<p><em>Rather listen? <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/episode-47-letter-from-the-executive-director/">The abbreviated spoken letter is also available.</a> </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:"Mon, 16 Jan 2023 12:00:00 +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:7:"Josepha";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:72:"Do The Woo Community: Finding Team Members to Fit Your Companies Culture";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=74204";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:71:"https://dothewoo.io/finding-team-members-to-fit-your-companies-culture/";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:442:"<p>Marius Vetrici has built a process to bring in new employees that are drawn to fit his companies values, and to grow with them as a team member.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/finding-team-members-to-fit-your-companies-culture/">Finding Team Members to Fit Your Companies Culture</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, 16 Jan 2023 10:09:00 +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: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:95:"Gutenberg Times: Box Shadow, Newsletter Theme, Testing Call 20 and more – Weekend Edition 241";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=23190";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://gutenbergtimes.com/box-shadow-newsletter-theme-testing-call-20-and-more-weekend-edition-241/";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:15190:"<p>Howdy, </p>





<p>Last week&#8217;s Live Q &amp; A on Layout features went really well, with numerous participants. The post and the show notes are still in the works. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-bKR7yjjOU">recording is available on YouTube</a>, should you want to revisit parts of it or missed it entirely. </p>



<p>Now that feature freeze for the major WordPress release is only three weeks away, the contributors would appreciate it if you could heed the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/01/11/fse-program-testing-call-20-find-your-style/"><strong>20th call for testing from the FSE Outreach program.</strong></a> You can help find quirks, bugs and annoyances, so they can be fixed before February 7th and during the round of beta version of the release. </p>



<p>Have a lovely weekend! </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>






<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-s">Upcoming WordPress events</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-l">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<h2 id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v15.0.0-rc.1"><strong>Gutenberg 15.0 release candidate</strong></a> is available for testing. Sticky positioning,  resizable Site editor, updated to the Page List block, modify block style variations from global styles, and a lot more refinements are coming to the Gutenberg plugin</p>



<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-78-state-of-the-word-wordpress-6-2-gutenberg-14-8-and-14-9/">Gutenberg Changelog #78 -State of the Word, WordPress 6.2, Gutenberg 14.8 and 14.9</a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and special guest Hector Prieto</p>
</div></div>



<p>Last April, a group of contributors started working on research on how to best implement an API for to make blocks more interactive. This week, <strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> shared a progress report: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/update-on-the-work-to-make-building-interactive-blocks-easier/">Update on the work to make building interactive blocks easier</a>. </strong></p>



<p>The resources linked in the post are mostly code internals, so they are definitely very technical at this point. With that said, understanding how the new API works, will not be necessary for developers to use this new standard. A standard proposal will be published the next few months. So for now, this is all bit technical and architectural. The work on the underlying framework is shared on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/block-hydration-experiments">this GitHub Repository</a></p>



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



<h2 id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p><strong>Munir Kamal</strong>, GutenbergHub, shows you in his latest post <a href="https://gutenberghub.com/how-to-find-and-use-block-patterns-in-wordpress/"><strong>How to Find and Use Block Patterns in WordPress</strong></a>. You learn, how to find patterns in the post and site editor, how to navigate the WordPress Pattern Directory and how to install the patterns via the plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/extendify/"><em>Extendify Patterns and Templates</em></a></p>



<p>If you want to create your own patterns, but don&#8217;t know how to code them, you can use the plugin <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/blockmeister/">Blockmeister &#8211; Block Pattern Builder</a></strong>. </p>



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



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reports on the <a href="https://wptavern.com/lettre-newsletter-theme-now-available-on-wordpress-org"><strong>Lettre Newsletter Theme Now Available on WordPress.org</strong></a>, It can be used with the newly release newsletter feature in Jetpack plugin or as a stand-along theme. &#8220;The theme puts the focus on the subscription form, which is the most important thing a newsletter landing page can do – make it easy for people to sign up. Beneath the form there is a link to read all the posts, followed by another subscription form. All of these elements in the home page design are blocks, making it easy for them to be removed or rearranged.&#8221; Gooding wrote. </p>



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



<p><strong>Will Morris</strong> explained the three ways <strong><a href="https://torquemag.io/2023/01/table-of-contents-wordpress/">add a Table of Contents in WordPress</a></strong>  in is post for the <em>Torque Magazine</em>. The three ways are: </p>



<ul>
<li>Install a plugin</li>



<li>Use on the Custom Table of Contents blocks</li>



<li>Create you Table manually in the Block Editor. </li>
</ul>



<p>Soon you will be able to use the core Table of Content&#8217;s block once it comes out of the experimental stage. It&#8217;s already available via the Gutenberg plugin. </p>



<h2 id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p>In his post, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong>, walks you through the<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/01/11/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/"> <strong>layout classes in WordPress 6.1</strong></a>. With the latest release of WordPress, the software has now centralized its layout definitions, created semantic class names, and reduced code duplication on container blocks. &#8220;Originally, this post was intended to be a quick look at the changes to the system for theme authors. However, given the heftiness of the topic, it has evolved into a full overview of the layout framework.&#8221; Tadlock wrote. </p>



<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/01/12/using-the-box-shadow-feature-for-themes/"><img /></a>



<p>In his second post published on the Developer Blog, <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/01/12/using-the-box-shadow-feature-for-themes/"><strong>Using the box shadow feature for themes,</strong></a> <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> took a look at the box shadow support, that what just released in Gutenberg 14.9. As it happens with similar features, the first iteration of box shadow support is only available via code. The interface for the site editor screens are still in the works. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<p><strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> held her inaugural live programming session on Twitch this week. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZslURB8tos"><strong>The recording is now available on YouTube</strong></a>. In this stream, she talked about: </p>



<ul>
<li>using LocalWP for local WordPress development, </li>



<li>the Create Block Theme Plugin, and </li>



<li>took a look at the code from a couple of existing block themes.</li>
</ul>



<p>You need a Twitch account and follow <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/daisyonwp"><strong>DaisyonWP</strong></a> to get notified when she goes live. </p>



<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZslURB8tos"><img /></a>



<p>In his latest post for <a href="https://css-tricks.com/styling-buttons-in-wordpress-block-themes/"><strong>CSS-Tricks: Styling Buttons in WordPress Block&nbsp;Themes</strong></a>, <strong>Fränk Klein,</strong> takes a detailed look markup of various buttons and how to style them via the theme.json properties. </p>



<h2 id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/tommcfarlin">Tom McFarlin</a></strong> continued his series <a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-5/"><strong>A Backend Engineer Learns to Build Block Editor Blocks with Part 5</strong></a> in which he covers adding color controls to a custom block for the use case, when you want to give the user the option to select the colors for the block themselves. </p>



<p>McFarlin, recommend the previous articles first as they build on top of each other. So far, he published: </p>



<ol>
<li><a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-1/">Required Tools, Plugin Structure, Dependencies, Block Metadata</a></li>



<li><a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-2/">The Backend, The Frontend, Functionality, Styles, a Working Demo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-3/">Block Attributes, Editable Content, Components, Editor Styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-4/">Saving Data, Styling the Frontend</a></li>
</ol>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/phil_sola123">Phil Sola</a></strong> create a <a href="https://github.com/phil-sola/WordPress-Custom-Color-Picker">Custom Color Picker for WordPress.</a> Sola added some improvements to the existing color picker. It&#8217;s more an experiment rather than a full-fledged solution. His exploration might also be an inspiration for others to start experimenting with WordPress component library. </p>



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




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2 id="5-s">Upcoming WordPress events</h2>



<p>February 4 + 5, 2023<br /><a href="https://birmingham.wordcamp.org/"><strong>WordCamp Birmingham, AL</strong></a></p>



<p><strong>February 17 – 19, 2023</strong><br /><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/"><strong>WordCamp Asia 2023</strong></a>&nbsp;</p>



<p><em><a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/"><strong>Check the schedule of WordCamp Central</strong></a> of upcoming WordCamps near you. </em></p>



<h3 id="1-l">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</h3>



<p>January 17, 2023 – 3pm / 20:00 UTC<br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290412094/"><strong>Patterns, reusable blocks and block locking</strong></a></p>



<p>January 19th, 2023 &#8211; 10:30 ET / 15:30 UTC<br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290834241/"><strong>Live stream: Building an Advanced Query Loop block variation plugin</strong></a> w/ Ryan Welcher <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/daisyonwp">@ryanwelchercodes</a></p>



<p>January 19, 2023 – 7 pm ET / 24:00 UTC<br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290363952/"><strong>Let’s make custom templates in the Site Editor!</strong></a></p>



<p>January 20, 2023 – 3 am ET / 8:00 UTC<br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290363952/"><strong>Let’s make custom templates in the Site Editor!</strong></a></p>



<p>January 20, 2023 &#8211; 10:30 am 15:30 UTC <br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/fhqnbtyfccbbc/">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></strong> w/ Daisy Olsen <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/daisyonwp">@daisyonwp</a></p>



<p>January 23, 2023 &#8211; 10 pm ET / 1 am UTC <br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290412176/">Patterns, reusable blocks and block locking (APAC time zone)</a></strong></p>



<p>January 26, 2023 &#8211; 10:30 am ET / 15:30 UTC <br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290834152/"><strong>Live stream: Reviewing developer-focused features in Gutenberg 15.0</strong></a> w/ Ryan Welcher <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/daisyonwp">@ryanwelchercodes</a></p>



<p>January 31, 2023 – 3pm ET / 20:00 UTC<br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290414181/"><strong>Creating a photography website with the block editor</strong></a></p>



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




<p>Featured Image: <strong>Amit Patel:</strong> Mango Shake Orange Sweet found in WordPress.org/photos</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";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, 14 Jan 2023 22:30:27 +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:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";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:63:"WPTavern: WooCommerce 7.3 Introduces New Products Block in 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=141097";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:74:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-3-introduces-new-products-block-in-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:2242:"<p><a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/01/12/woocommerce-7-3-released/">WooCommerce 7.3</a> was released this week with the new Products block now in beta. In December 2022, the Products block went into testing in <a href="https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-blocks-9-1-0-introduces-products-block-in-beta">WooCommerce Blocks version 9.1.0</a>. It&#8217;s based on the Query Loop block and is intended to replace all of WooCommerce&#8217;s current product-displaying blocks.</p>



<p>This first beta version of the Products block allows users to list products based on specific criteria and their layout in the list or grid. </p>



<img />



<p>Version 7.3 also introduces three &#8220;commerce-adjacent&#8221; patterns for building WooCommerce store pages. These are patterns that do not tap into WooCommerce store data but allow store owners to customize the images and the links. These patterns were also tested in WooCommerce Blocks 9.1.0. They include an alternating image and text block pattern, a product hero with two columns and two rows, and a &#8220;Just Arrived&#8221; full hero pattern.</p>



<img />image source: <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/01/12/woocommerce-7-3-released/">WooCommerce 7.3 release post</a>



<p>This release also brings store owners a new <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2022/10/11/woocommerce-7-0-released/">multichannel marketing experience</a> in beta. Under the Marketing menu in the admin, users can now view a list of recommended marketing extensions without leaving the dashboard. These can be installed directly from the Marketing page.</p>



<img />



<p>Other notable features in WooCommerce 7.3 include Pinterest and Codisto extensions added to the onboarding wizard, a new warning banner when the tax settings have a conflict, and an improved UI for creating product attributes and uploading product images.</p>



<p>Check out the release <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/01/12/woocommerce-7-3-released/">post</a> to see the template changes and all the new actions and filters available for developers. The full <a href="https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/7.3.0/changelog.txt">7.3 changelog</a> is available on GitHub.</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, 14 Jan 2023 04:25:34 +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: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:64:"WPTavern: Lettre Newsletter Theme Now Available on 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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=141076";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://wptavern.com/lettre-newsletter-theme-now-available-on-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:2595:"<p>Automattic has published its <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/lettre/">Lettre theme</a> to WordPress.org. The company <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-launches-newsletter-product">launched its newsletter product</a> at the end of December 2022 using Lettre as the default theme. The self-hosted version of this block theme is for those who want to publish a newsletter using Jetpack.</p>



<img />



<p>The theme puts the focus on the subscription form, which is the most important thing a newsletter landing page can do &#8211; make it easy for people to sign up. Beneath the form there is a link to read all the posts, followed by another subscription form. All of these elements in the home page design are blocks, making it easy for them to be removed or rearranged.</p>



<p>Lettre comes with 15 block patterns for building different pages and designs, including about the author(s), a bold color signup, a two-column signup, various designs for the newsletter intro with light and dark background images, newsletter signup with media on the left, newsletter signup with logos for the background, a list of posts, an in-post article promo, three columns of text, and more.</p>



<img />



<p>A <a href="https://lettredemo.wordpress.com/">live demo</a> of the theme is available on WordPress.com. The menu items on the demo give a few examples of the different signup patterns in action.</p>



<p>Lettre is designed to be used with Jetpack&#8217;s Subscription block, which uses WordPress.com&#8217;s infrastructure to manage emails and subscribers. If you like the design but are already using another newsletter service, the Jetpack Subscribe block can be replaced with any other block, including the shortcode block for newsletter services that haven&#8217;t yet made their subscription forms available via a block. Be advised, you may need to write some custom CSS to ensure that the subscribe form matches the original design.</p>



<p>Lettre is one of the only themes in the WordPress Themes Directory that was made to be a newsletter landing page and certainly the only block theme dedicated to this purpose. Combined with Jetpack&#8217;s subscription feature, this is one of the most seamless ways to distribute a newsletter without all the extra steps of copying the content into a newsletter service&#8217;s editor. Lettre is  available for free <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/lettre/">download from WordPress.org</a>. I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to see more themes like this pop up now that WordPress.com has launched its newsletter service.</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, 14 Jan 2023 02:50:40 +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:97:"Do The Woo Community: Taking a Deep Dive Into the Current State of Social Media with David Bisset";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=74300";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:50:"https://dothewoo.io/current-state-of-social-media/";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:422:"<p>David Bisset and I share our current experiences with Twitter, Mastodon, Linked, Tumblr, the Fediverse and open source. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/current-state-of-social-media/">Taking a Deep Dive Into the Current State of Social Media with David Bisset</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:"Fri, 13 Jan 2023 10:58:00 +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: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:77:"WPTavern: New Video Explores Site Building Progress from WordPress 5.9 to 6.2";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=141039";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:88:"https://wptavern.com/new-video-explores-site-building-progress-from-wordpress-5-9-to-6-2";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:3346:"<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-9-josephine-released-introduces-full-site-editing-and-new-twenty-twenty-two-default-theme">WordPress 5.9 &#8220;Josephine&#8221;</a> was released in January 2022, but that seems like ages ago when you compare the advances made in site building over the past year. Anne McCarthy, an Automattic-sponsored contributor who heads up the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/11/the-fse-outreach-program-is-officially-starting/">Full Site Editing Outreach Program</a>, has published a short video that tours the important changes in WordPress over the past few major releases. The video also doubles as a preview of some of the features coming in 6.2.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<p>If you are using the Gutenberg plugin and have been tracking the relentless progress of the Site Editor, you will notice how limited the design options are in 5.9 and how much more consistent and expansive they are today. In 5.9 users users can only add a Front page template, and the site building interface is disjointed and less polished.</p>



<p>McCarthy demonstrates how WordPress 6.2 will introduce smoother interactions with browse mode. It will also greatly expand the template options available for users to add and includes a new colorized list view. </p>



<p>The Navigation block has had a long, rocky journey but seems to be reborn in 6.2. McCarthy showed how much more intuitive it has become with the new experience of editing navigation in the sidebar, and repositioning via drag and drop with live previews.</p>



<img />



<p>The instant that Style Variations were introduced in <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-0-arturo-adds-more-templates-and-patterns-style-switching-and-block-locking-ui">WordPress 6.0</a>, it seemed they were always with us. Looking back at 5.9 in the video, the Site Editor appears so bare without them. WordPress 6.2 will extend this even further with improved block style previews, a style book, and a new zoomed out view that makes it easy to see changes at a glance.</p>



<p>Everything coming in 6.2 is converging towards better usability and more design options for site editors. The challenge here is to continue introducing new features without the interface becoming cluttered and chaotic. Many of these features are still being ironed out. For example, McCarthy mentioned that the Edit button is still a work in progress and may soon be relocated to be more prominent in the Site Editor. </p>



<p>This video gives a quick visual summary of what is being done to wrap up the full-site editing phase of the Gutenberg project before contributors move on to Collaboration. It is worth a watch to see the site building progress that contributors have made in just one year.</p>



<p>If you want to get involved in making sure all these features in 6.2 are ready for prime time, check out McCarthy&#8217;s latest FSE Testing Call: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/category/call-for-testing/">Find Your Style</a>.  It will plunge you into the new features of the Site Editor to perform a few tasks. It&#8217;s essentially a guided opportunity to explore the new interface while contributing back to WordPress, and you will earn a fancy testing contributor badge that will display on your WordPress.org profile.</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, 13 Jan 2023 03:56:21 +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: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:96:"Post Status: On OpenAI And WordPress With Jannis Thuemmig Of WP-Webooks— Post Status Draft 136";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=146297";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:104:"https://poststatus.com/on-openai-and-wordpress-with-jannis-thuemmig-of-wp-webooks-post-status-draft-136/";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:43263:"<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">Jannis Thuemmig, founder of WP Webhooks, joins Cory Miller to discuss Open AI and WordPress. Jannis is passionate about utilizing the power of technology to increase efficiency. WP Webhooks is exploring the ways Open AI can be used to revolutionize website processes and management. It seems we are only at the tip of the iceberg for what is possible when working with WordPress and Open AI. </p></div>


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



<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">40</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p>In this episode, Jannis Thuemmig, serial entrepreneur and founder of <a href="https://wp-webhooks.com/">WP Webhooks</a>, dives into the world of automation and Open AI with Cory Miller. Together they look at what is currently possible within the world of integration and automation within WordPress. Then they lean into what is unfolding as Open AI finds its way into the mainstream and discuss what this might mean for the WordPress community.</p>



<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Integrations & Automations to Save Time: </strong>Everyone is in need of some kind of automation. Our main goal is to save time by creating automations wherever there are pain points. Rather than doing things manually, WP Webhooks enables you to automate them within your dashboard.</li>



<li><strong>Avoiding Automation through Software: </strong>Using software as a service partner means hosting your data on their platforms. Using Webhooks for integration and automation allows you to keep things on your server and within your complete control.</li>



<li><strong>Possibilities with Open AI Integration: </strong>Webhooks is focused on using Open AI as an advantage to speed up processes by creating integrations between services and generating original content. They are working on finding cool use cases and understanding the actual power of what it makes possible.</li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-42 wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-color has-theme-palette-5-background-color has-text-color has-background" id="WP-Engine">
<div class="is-layout-flow 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>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow 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>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thuemmig/?originalSubdomain=de">Jannis Thuemmig</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp-webhooks.com/">WP Webhooks</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/">Open AI</a></li>



<li><a href="https://zapier.com/">Zapier</a></li>



<li><a href="https://teachable.com/">Teachable</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp-webhooks.com/blog/how-to-use-openai-within-wordpress-yoast-seo-example/">How to Use Open AI within WordPress (Yoast SEO example)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://circle.so/">Circle</a></li>



<li><a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/karimmarucchi">Karim Marucchi</a></li>



<li><a href="https://crowdfavorite.com/">Crowd Favorite</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li>Jannis Thuemmig (Founder, <a href="https://twitter.com/wp_webhooks">WP Webhooks</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>
</ul>



<p class="eplus-wrapper has-background">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png" alt="📝" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simplecast</a>, or <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>



<h2 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<p>GMT20230105-161248_Recording</p>



<h1>GMT20230105-161248_Recording</h1>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Post Status Draft. This is another interview and discussion in our Product People series, and I've got someone I've met, let's see, last year or the year before Giannis and doing good work, but we were talking about AI and that led to OpenAI and something they're doing with WP Webhooks.</p>



<p>So that's what the conversation is gonna be about today. But Giannis, welcome to the draft podcast. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work and WordPress?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Sure, totally. Thanks for having me here. Uh, it's always an honor. Uh, my name is Giannis. I'm from Germany originally, but started traveling a long time ago and since then, I basically work as a digital dumper from anywhere.</p>



<p>And I would say with a, with a very, very deep focus on web. And specifically in automation. This is where W P Airport comes from. So we are basically focused on connecting different services and WebPress plugging to let them talk to each other and kind of just automate the [00:01:00] system and get rid of the human error and save everyone a little bit of time and money, which is really interesting nowadays.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, I, and I love it. Uh, one part I'll just sidebar real quick is I know when you say digital notepad, uh, the several times we've had zooms, I'm like, where are you in the world today, y'all? It's like, . Um, so I, I love that. I love to see the nude, like landscapes you're in every time we talk. Um, okay. So WP Webhooks, um, I know you've been, so automation is key.</p>



<p>It's about efficiency, um, like really saving that time. In the processes you're doing, um, what, tell me what all does WP Webhooks do?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> So basically it allows you to use a set of redefine integrations to let other services and WebPress plugin specifically talk to each other. So let's say there's, um, a woo commerce shop, for example, and you have a, a custom programmed plugin that has no integrations [00:02:00] whatsoever.</p>



<p>You can use our plugin as a middleman to allow sending data in between, and that works with mostly any kind of WebPress plugins as well as external data like, uh, external services, something like Zapier or make or integrated. So the, the basic main goal is to just make them compatible, which they, in a lot of cases, aren't from the beginning. Or if they are, they're often very limited, which is something we realized as well. So we just want to kind of get that interoperability to WordPress, which is something that was just lacking over the last couple of years.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, I, I love that. I know Zapier has used quite a bit uh, obviously we've used it in the past at, at Post Status because of all the external services, and you're trying to link these and do some things that certain pieces of software doesn't do out of the bat.</p>



<p>So I, I love the premise of web hooks for sure. Uh, WP Web Hooks, what are you seeing or finding? Customers are gravitating to webhooks [00:03:00] for, like is there specific tasks that stand out that people are using these over and over and over and going, this is what I need. I don't want to pay for Zapier or some other alternative, I wanna do something here with my WordPress site.</p>



<p>What are you seeing from your customers?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> So I'd say that's not a specific use case. There's, uh, quite a lot. So everyone, literally, everyone who's in the, in the, has a web presence or has an online shop or something related and does something with website. Everyone is in in need of doing some kind of automations.</p>



<p>Let it be to automatically book orders into your accounting system or synchronize your properties from a property management website with your WebPress website. Or let's say you have a Teachable account and you sell online courses and you want to synchronize your students with a WebPress website to give them extra features.</p>



<p>This is stuff that they are using it for. So basically wherever there's a pain point and there's some time that just can be avoided by automating it through software. This is something where we are, um, jumping in [00:04:00] and it's specifically interesting right now for people that are very critical about privacy because especially in Europe, a lot of people don't want to use software as a service partners like Zapier or Integra.</p>



<p>Because they are hosting their data on other platforms, right? So they have no full control over it, which comes very handy with our plugin because you have your own server, so everything runs on your own server. You are in full control where your data is, what your data does. And this is a very, very critical point that is, uh, always, always well seen at the moment.</p>



<p>Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, yeah, for sure. I, you went to a subject I didn't even think about, which is if you don't want your information out there on another service, having it in in WordPress, something you control. I think that's a key facet. Before we start talking about, uh, AI and specifically OpenAI, what are you most excited about with webhooks this year?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Ooh, for sure. Bringing that AI space model [00:05:00] web. Because we had so much fun over the last couple of months trying these things out, seeing in which direction it goes. And it's just incredibly fun to, to play around with it because the possibilities are really endless. And we are, we are fully about saving time.</p>



<p>Right? And this is something we can even use to leverage more time out of our daily task, which is really, really good. Okay.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well let's roll into that because I think that's one of the most, uh, uh, Interesting themes in our community is ai. I've seen a couple tweets saying AI is gonna revolutionize, um, a lot of stuff with a website by the end of 2023.</p>



<p>I can't remember who said that online. And I was like, well, I've been paying attention enough. But talk to me about ai, OpenAI and what you, you see on the horizon for, um, for WordPress particularly, and opportunities and possibilities. . Yeah,</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> so ai uh, specifically in our case with OpenAI, uh, there's, uh, a little differentiation.</p>



<p>So [00:06:00] right now it's very much hyped, the G P T three. So the, the kind of chat ai as you can, as you can, uh, think of, which is basically you just type in something and it, it gives you like a very human answer back, which is really, really incredible. And, uh, we specifically talk about the, the OpenAI api, which kind of allows you to.</p>



<p>Communicate data on a programmatic level, which means you basically don't even need to type something yourself, but you can already use a service to let these things run through the web automatically without ever touching this kind of data. And this is, this is just something that that works very well with, with the automation part.</p>



<p>Right. So we are, we are basically looking into bringing more possibilities that AI through non-static data, and, uh, what I mean by non static data, it's probably interesting to, to understand what an AI actually is. So it's a pre-trained network, right? It has the data that was feeded to it at some point. And with OpenAI, it's made from [00:07:00] mostly 2021.</p>



<p>So it has no actual new data. If you ask it something like what happened yesterday, for example, it could probably not give you an answer to, you could give it the information if you have it yourself. But it can never give you like the, the news and accurate information. And using things like automation, you can basically bring a whole new word to it because you can kind of give the AI the possibility through response and, uh, requests to send data through automation, uh, validate it somewhere else and send it back to the AI and tell the ai, Hey, look, there's new information.</p>



<p>We can use that, uh, or, or learn about that and, um, send me some more information or summarize me something. So it's, it's just a very interesting time in, in regards to giving the AI actual information that you can feed it, uh, that is currently not within its its own, um, possibilities.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So you said something there.</p>



<p>Um, I, I haven't even gotten that in depth with OpenAI, but So in [00:08:00] 2021 they fed it a ton of data you're saying, and then trained it to be able to, to answer questions and things.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Yeah, exactly. So basically they had a, a huge dataset or couple of datasets for sure about the information that they fitted. And the AI can basically make.</p>



<p>An answer that is, uh, in a human real reform, and that seems like it is made from a human, but the data that was fed is all from 2021, right? So it is a static data if we, if we want to hear it or not. So if you're gonna ask the ai, what is the latest model of iPhone, for example, it'll probably tell you something like it's the iPhone 13, because I don't think it has information about iPhone 14.</p>



<p>That would be something cool to try, but I guess it must be, uh, outdated information. And with that gap of, of using that, that automation in, in connection with ai, you can kind of close that gap and you can actually feed it real time data and use that data to, to do certain things within the AI [00:09:00] and, uh,</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I see, thats a new one.</p>



<p>Yeah, it does. Um, totally to me, and I'm asking as a newbie to all of this, um, because I've used it and I'm like, this is pretty dang fast. And I'm like, how the heck are they doing that? That makes total sense. And then from the training side, um, the model itself is, I was like, gosh, if this had access to that, and you could just ask it questions like that.</p>



<p>It's the, it's the a hundred times better Google. Yeah, because, yeah, it, like, I was, I, I mean I asked what are the strengths and weaknesses of WordPress, for instance, and it came back. Um, but knowing it's, it's a little bit lag on the data side is interesting to me. Um, but I saw the potential for this to truly.</p>



<p>Revolutionized some things on the web. Um, so it's, it, it's been really intriguing and I mean, I asked it all kinds of questions that I was just actually curious about and seeing what, not just from the what, [00:10:00] how the model would work, but the answer. And I was like, this is like a perfectly uh, formatted.</p>



<p>Informative, um, short essay that I would've gotten in college, you know, so that's</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> intriguing. It's actually you can, you can write like on demand stories for your kids based on your own characters. Just type in a sentence, say you run a short story and it spits you out a short story that you can read them from going to bed.</p>



<p>It's amazing. It's just like incredible.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I'm gonna have to try that today. I, I continue. This subject fascinates me and I think it's something we need to be thinking about and looking at and talking about in WordPress and Post Status, because this new technology coming and then how WordPress is placed in this.</p>



<p>And for years, I think this is a segway to talk about OpenAI and WordPress specifically. But you know, I've either built sites for people or known a bunch of people that build sites for clients. And you turn on this awesome, it's like you turn this car over, you pull this car up to 'em, and [00:11:00] you're like, here's your car.</p>



<p>But you gotta drive it with content, with things inside the site, and it's such a great vehicle for that. But oftentimes people get hung up on that part of. Oh, I don't know what to, I don't know how to drive my car. Right? Like these, you know, WordPress sites with the right architecture, the right things can really drive and make a dent.</p>



<p>That's our kind of thing with WordPress is like it's magic like that. But you still have to like, Drive it, you have to put gas in it and drive it, uh, with content. So that's a compelling angle for me with OpenAI. And I've heard about all these things. Before we segue specifically to the integration you've done too and some possibilities there, what, where do you see all of this and WordPress going?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Like, that's a very interesting question. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think, I think it will be in relay, I mean, it's, right now we are specifically in the content age, right? So I, I've seen a lot of people. [00:12:00] Going into the space where they try to create on demand articles using an ai, which is probably a terrible idea just through plagiarism because it's very easily detected if you don't lose like a rewriter and you use your very own wordings in between.</p>



<p>So this is something that we will see switching, definitely. But what I see as an advantage in the future with WebPress is that people will use to. We, we learn to use AI for the advantage in the sense of speeding up their process. So it's also kind of a, a way of automating things, uh, in the sense that they don't need to write their content anymore from scratch, or they don't need to write a, think about copywriting that much.</p>



<p>They just ask the ai, it's bit something out. They put it in, maybe adjust it, tweak it in their own way so that it has their very own style. And they probably just make the, the way of, of riding blocks 10 times a hundred times faster than it's right now. So we'll definitely see like a, a boost in performance and [00:13:00] probably block block posts over the long term.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Well, so that leads into this specific integration you have and the tutorial I, I was looking through before we started. Um, so you saw OpenAI has an api and tell us, tell us about that in WP Web Web Hook.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> So, yeah, we, we basically started, um, after trying a couple of times how OpenAI works to, um, to integrate it with our plugin.</p>



<p>So we, we usually go for creating integrations for different services and plugins, and, uh, in that case it's, it's once separately for OpenAI, which makes it compatible with all of the other services and, uh, plugins. We are integrated. And the main goal was just to provide the integration, right? Because it's so new, barely anyone understands the actual power of it and what is possible.</p>



<p>So we, we just kind of created it out of the blue with a thought of, Hey, it would be cool to just have it, you know, let's see what, what's going to happen. And right now we are basically just [00:14:00] working on finding cool use cases. And, uh, there are definitely a couple, uh, like I've, I've, uh, showed you earlier.</p>



<p>We already have a blog post on our. That basically describes how you can auto generate method descriptions using OpenAI and Yost seo. So you basically just feed it in the title and it spits your order, perfectly made method description that you can just use or adjust as you want. And these kind of things, they just now come through trial and error basically.</p>



<p>And, uh, it's, it's very interesting to see where it goes. And I can see that with these kind of automat. Um, we can also provide what I mentioned earlier, that that possibility of feeding the AI new information that is not available within the AI itself. So because we can make these kind of workflows, um, if that makes sense.</p>



<p>And this is, uh, this is mostly what we are trying to do right now. We basically just working on, on use cases, see what's possible, trying out different things and it's a super, super exciting. [00:15:00]</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, you talk about this car, you some a a site builder turns the car over and they start to use it.</p>



<p>But that meta, uh, description is one thing. Like I honestly confess, I never do, you know, but it's, it's helpful, it's vital. And so like that one little use case in the bigger picture of what I can do, I think starts to step us into this and it is really interesting. Um,</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> oh, totally. Yeah. This is, this is literally just the, the tip of the iceberg.</p>



<p>If you want, you can basically let the AI create a, a full schema, uh, like a shima for your, for your website. So whenever there's a blog post, it can write the how-tos and everything in, in kind of adjacent format and, uh, spits your order perfectly well formatted SEO description and, and everything keyboards, the, the, the whole how to, and this is just, it's just such a time saver.</p>



<p>It's incredible.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well, okay. Do you have a tutorial on that [00:16:00] too? Because that's really interesting. Um, , or if you don't, we need one. Um, but so you're going into OpenAI or chat GPT or whatever, and then you're saying you're asking a question or something like that, and then it's gonna give you back those things.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Yeah, exactly. It's just you literally ask it just a humanly written question, something like, give me back adjacent with each of these information. And it spits you out adjacent with each of the information. And Jason, you can always use on a technical level, right? So we can just leverage that out and use it through our plugin to use it in different automations and do different things.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Oh, that's super cool. Well, what do you have anything you wanna share about what you're doing next with this WP WebHooks?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Um. As a, as a use case, it's a, I mean, we, we definitely, for, for now we really try to just work on the OpenAI things mm-hmm. and try to find some cool use cases there. Uh, we had a lot of, um, a lot of actually customers reaching out about the possibilities as well and how exactly it works because the models [00:17:00] and the configuration is a bit complicated if you, if you're not fully aware of it.</p>



<p>But, uh, yeah, we, we just follow the standards and, uh, things should be fairly easy. But yeah, for us, it, it's mostly, mostly OpenAI and creating new integrations. That's something we're, we are hardly focused on at the moment.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I, I really think this is, like you said, the tip of the iceberg that, um, I'm really intrigued by our WordPress community post at Post Status to go, okay, here's this cool technology.</p>



<p>How do we translate this into practical? Um, uses for the end client, the end user in WordPress. Um, so that, that's, that's interesting. We'll be excited to hear what, what you find in explorer and launch launch next.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Yeah, you should just see the block post, uh, our, our, our block. There will be a couple of more tutorials coming.</p>



<p>They're already in the making, so in the next days we should see someone there.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Perfect. All right. Um, okay. So. You, you [00:18:00] showed me something as like this. I think this is just showing the power of what it could do when we start to get these types of integrations into WordPress. Do you mind showing me the one you were telling me about?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Totally. Yeah. Not a problem. Of course. I'm just gonna share my screen, probably this one. Yes, so I, I was basically just fooling around the other day on. With our integration, trying to find some new cool ways we can use to, to present the OpenAI integration. And, you know, like, like I mentioned earlier, you can kind of ask the AI to create adjacent format, um, with specific data.</p>



<p>So Jason is basically just a structured way of presenting data within the web that is something that the, the browser or the, the server can. And in our case, we, we, we wanted to have like, like in here, uh, just a simple field that you can write something and based on whatever you write, it updates the block post of [00:19:00] your choice.</p>



<p>So in our case, we just created a quick contact form seven form as we have an integration with contact as well. And we connected that with open. To create a so-called Jason and update a block post based on a specific information. So I can just demonstrate it here. You can see I have three block posts available and let's just take this one.</p>



<p>I just need the ID because that's the way we wrote it. So we have ID 97, and what I would like to do is, let's say I want to update the, the title of this post, right? So I can, I can write something like, Update the post with the id, let's say post title</p>



<p>with ID 97 and change it to, um, this is a new title based on OpenAI. So it's, it's basically what we read as a, as a human tech, [00:20:00] right. But if I submit that and I let our workflow. The AI basically interprets that and, uh, changes it based on our parameters within, uh, Jason. And when I refresh here and, um, the flow ran, it should display it.</p>



<p>See if it doesn't, no, it doesn't. Uh, so the thing is, because it depends what you feed the ai. So the AI basically needs to understand what you do. And, uh, in some, in some cases, that's, that's the problem with ai. It fits you out text, right? So you try to, you need to, to format. And kind of use the text in a different way so we can see.</p>



<p>Okay. Just didn't follow it. Just what I'm gonna do is, so to, to just, so the very same example, I just tried to type the similar thing again. Let's try it again. So, um, update the post with the ID 87 and change the title to, [00:21:00] um, OpenAI. Something new. Let's see now</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I always love live demos, . Yeah, I know. When you were showing me before I was like, wow, that's super cool.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Yeah, it really depends on the AI, if I, if I do it right or not. Um, but it seems like you see that it's not completed. So basically something stopped within the AI and uh, yeah, I would need to, I would need to see what.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, so you were showing, you were showing just now the webhooks, uh, pro dashboard. Do you mind taking us for a spin around the Webhooks Pro dashboard?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Uh, yeah, totally. So it's basically like, you know, standard WebPress plugin and stuff. On the site menu we have, uh, our W2 Web Hooks Pro, um, menu item, and basically it's, it's separated into two main things, which is the automations, the flows, and the web. So there's, there's kind of a difference in between, because originally we came from the web website, which means it's kind of like a [00:22:00] one-way street for information to present.</p>



<p>Let's say you, you update a, a post on your WebPress website and based on that post you can send data into a, a certain direction, like directly and instantly to inform another service about that there's a new post. But then we realized that there's more of a need to actually automate kind of certain work.</p>



<p>And then we created something called Flows, which basically allows you to connect the, or create a consecutive order of triggers and actions. So web book triggers and actions to do certain things in a, in a specific flow as we call it. So I just head into it, uh, into one, which is the human posture. This was the example I tried to show you, which, uh, was currently not working out because of something that I need to see. Um, but what we have basically, within the floor. You can see we have a trigger, right? The trigger fires on a contact form seven. Within the settings, we basically selected the form that we created earlier, which is [00:23:00] embedded in, in the site.</p>



<p>And we don't want to send the email as we just want to send the data to OpenAI. And it was tested. We set up some conditionals, um, stuff that's not really important for now, but, uh, this is, this is basically what causes the actual workflow to fire, right? So, This specific trigger comes along with all the data that was sent within this form, and we then reuse the data in the other kind of actions here.</p>



<p>And as you can see, the first action is something, uh, is our OpenAI integration, where we basically sent that information that we had earlier, as you can see here, to OpenAI as a, as a text. And this is, this is what we read. So it basically says, get the posterity and the PostIt from the JSON, uh, in the JSON format.</p>



<p>This is the sentence, and the sentence basically is a dynamic string that comes from the input that we sent within this form. So it makes more sense if, if we go through it logically while, while building it. But, um, [00:24:00] when you click into a field like this, you will see it shows a dropdown, and inside of the dropdown you will see all of the information that was sent within the trigger, including the question like, change the title of the post idea, ???</p>



<p>So this is basically what we selected here. And this is kind of more details about the OpenAI stuff. Sure. And yeah, when you, when you continue safe, you can test the action directly within here. That's something I can try, um, just as an example to see what comes back. So basically right now I'm sending a real request with the data that we got earlier.</p>



<p>And this is basically the response. So we can see, we got some text back from the AI, which looks a bit weird as it's text. But within our plugin we have something like a formatter, which allows us to format the data and change into something readable. So I'm just gonna quickly do that to, to give you a better example of what we get back.</p>



<p>So as you can see, this is what we get back from the AI or from the formatter, which came originally from [00:25:00] the OpenAI. And this specific information we want to then use in another action to actually update the post. And this is, this is literally everything it does. You can just think it of simple steps that, like we have a trigger.</p>



<p>The trigger causes, uh, runs whenever the, the specific contact form was sent, then we sent the data to OpenAI. We format it in a certain way, and then we update the post based on whatever data we got back from the OpenAI. Excellent. So, yeah, exactly. This is, this is basically it for that.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> What, what are some of the automations.</p>



<p>Yeah, I, I saw the create the automation. So what are the, some of the things that webhooks can do from the automation side?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Uh, you mean some examples for example? Ah-huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like I say, you can, you can, for example, connect the different services together. Let's, for example, say you have newcomer, right?</p>



<p>So you can go to the, to the integration [00:26:00] screen. You can install any kinds of integrations that you, you are working. So we have around hundred right now. And let's, for example, say you have commerce installed, right? So you can then install commerce once it's, once it's available on your website and within one of those automation workflows, you can then say, whenever commerce fires, then send the data using, uh, a WebBook, for example, to mm-hmm.</p>



<p>your bookkeeping system. Or send, send an email using the WordPress integration. So in here I can show you. Click send email, and then you have the possibility to send an email directly from your WebPress to the customer whenever, whenever, uh, an order was created. So it basically, it basically just allows you to do certain things that you would manually do within your dashboard.</p>



<p>Mm-hmm. ? Yes. In an automated way</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> There's a bunch of those things for the Post Status setup out the way. I'm like, oh gosh. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> I can't imagine. Same here.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> And, and what are, what are workflows to, uh, or I'm sorry, it's [00:27:00] webhooks. Oh, I thought that's a workflow somewhere. I read that wrong. Okay. Yes. So what</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> I can show you, it's, it's basically separated in two parts.</p>



<p>It's sent data and received data. What it basically means is these are kind of the triggers available, right? So whenever a user created, or when a user was deleted or when a form was submitted, you can send data to a specific url. Let's say, for example, I want to send a URL to my website, um, I cannot call it demo, and I, I add my api endpoint here and I edit, and then you can see it here. Which basically means when ev, every time a user gets created, you can send a direct webhook request to this url and you can test it, you can customize it with, with more features, more setups, um, based on your needs. Gotcha. And this is, this is what I mean earlier, like a, a direct connection.</p>



<p>And the receive data is basically the exact opposite. So instead of sending data out on a specific event, you send data in and to do something specific. So you can, for example, activate a plugin. As you can see, you can call a PHP [00:28:00] function, you can create a comment, a post a user. So we have basically mostly all of the options of WebPress available through, uh, web as well.</p>



<p>Excellent.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> You don't have a Slack integration, do you by chance ?</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Um, that's the, that's the thing. Depends what Slack has as an api. Um, if they truly have an API and if they have an api and it can be integrated with something like an API key or a hero token, it can also be used with our plugin. Um, and that's an interesting point.</p>



<p>That's good that you mentioned that we have something like,</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> um, it's a, it's a. Post Status specific thing, but I think a lot of membership sites, which is a big trend too. People building membership sites, course sites, you know, a lot of people like us obviously use Slack. Being able to, um, one, this is a nuance and I'm, uh, sorry for sharing, but this is like create a private group or something like that.</p>



<p>I've looked in some of the Slack API and. I'm using us as a [00:29:00] test for a second to say it is a broader thing. I think a lot of membership sites, they're using Circle, for instance, maybe they want to use something else. So I, I stopped you though. Keep going.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Oh, no problem. No problem. Um, yeah, but what I, what I mentioned earlier is that, like you say, with, with, uh, slack, we can kind of integrate with any service that allows, like simple API calls or web and uh, we have an integration available that is called Web itself.</p>



<p>So, When you install one like that, for example, and you go to, let's say an automation workflow, I can, I can come within here, add a new action, and you see I have a WebBook endpoint available, which basically allows me to send data or send a request to a specific site. So if you have Slack, you would, you would uh, add your Slack U URL here, for example, right?</p>



<p>Slack API or something, and then you. Select the method you want to use to send data, and you can send the data and add it here along. [00:30:00] So if there's a, a service out there that just follows the standard rep hook or api, um, standards, you can integrate them as well with our plugin. So there's not directly, uh, integration necessary. Basically.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Excellent. Well, one thing that's intriguing about this is for as long as I've been in WordPress, I, it, it has led the way in truly democratizing publishing, but over the years, you see Facebook, Twitter, what name, whatever default. Closed wall type garden come out. And um, I just did an interview with Mattias who does activity plug plugin for the Fed averse.</p>



<p>And I was like, the, you, you think about what you're doing here with webhooks and then the Fed averse is kind of bringing that power back to the. To the user and saying, okay, fed averse can help. To me, I just see the potential to go, let's, let's decentralize some of the social [00:31:00] networks. So when a billionaire buys the next thing, or they change their policy at one of these closed set social networks, you're, you know, all these people are affected by it.</p>



<p>And, and taking some of that control. So that's where I see FE averse. And then I go, what's the power here is. Ground zero for what you're doing is your WordPress site, and with things like tools like this, then you can start, I don't know, it's just helping bridge that gap of power. There's so much usability and features that these closed gardens have, but tools like webhooks and potential with the Fed averse is like bringing some of that power back, and I see WordPress truly being in the space to lead and innovate and bring that power back to the users.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Totally. Yeah, I fully agree with you. The, the, an interesting point about that is actually that using our plugin, for example, you can use it kind of as a standalone on WebPress. So if you say you want to make automations, you don't necessarily need to use WebPress, but [00:32:00] you can just set up a WebPress environment and install our plugin and you can.</p>



<p>Automate external services through WebPress. Right? So you can use it kind of as a middleman for yourself without actually using WebPress.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> And you still maintain control</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> in a lot of ways you have full control. Yes.</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Even if it's not a public facing site where you have content on like using that, that's the power, that's the other side of WordPress.</p>



<p>Do this has been become this huge power powerhouse of a, you know, a software. I talked to a lot of people on the enterprise and they mentioned. the connections. There's a, um, my friend Kareem at Crowd favorite talks about WordPress being the open source hub to connect services. So, like your example there.</p>



<p>I, I resonate with it cause I just talked to Kareem a couple weeks ago. I love that example. Yeah. Yep. Well, Gianni, anything else you wanna share, um, that you all have going on or you're excited about or anything I forgot to.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> Uh, yeah, I'm excited to make this tutorial work, so I think the next blockbuster [00:33:00] will see is probably about this example.</p>



<p>Okay. .</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I love it. Just to have, I love it. That's the beauty of being a part of this community as I get to ask cool, smart people that can do these things and see, see how they go. But I, I'll be playing around with open api. OpenAI's, API's, mouth, um, just cuz I was playing with that and like, wow, this is powerful and I love this kinda stuff and I love there's people like you experimenting with it, testing it, and giving users, um, that opportunity to do that.</p>



<p>Um, so thanks so much today for being on the Post Status draft podcast. Uh, this is under our product People series. I love our innovators in our community like you, and so thanks for joining me today.</p>



<p><strong>Jannis Thuemmig:</strong> My pleasure, really. So it's an honor. Thank you very much as well for inviting me.</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:"Thu, 12 Jan 2023 14:44:47 +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:"Olivia Bisset";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:85:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Entebbe: First Wordcamp to happen in Africa in 2023 is on!";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:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3158482";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:108:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/01/wordcamp-entebbe-first-wordcamp-to-happen-in-africa-in-2023-is-on/";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:3126:"<p></p>



<img src="https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/files/2022/07/Wordcamp-Artwork-copy-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" />



<p><a href="https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Entebbe 2023 </a>is set to be a major community event for WordPress developers, website designers, online publishers, students, and teachers to come together and share knowledge and experiences, network with other WordPress users, and gain inspiration for their work. Taking place on Friday, March 10th and Saturday, March 11th at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) in Entebbe City, this WordCamp will be the first to happen in Africa and is poised to be a memorable event for all attendees.</p>



<p>The event will feature a range of activities, including beginner&#8217;s training, inspirational talks, showcases, best practices, and the latest trends in WordPress development. In addition, there will be a Women in Tech panel discussion, aimed at inspiring and empowering women-led businesses to thrive in the technology industry. A Teacher&#8217;s Workshop will explore the integration of WordPress in the local education curriculum, providing teachers with the tools and resources they need to introduce WordPress to their students for web design projects and assessments.</p>



<p>Attendees will also have the opportunity to take a free tour of the <a href="http://uwec.ug">Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Center</a>, where they can learn about the animals of Uganda and the ecosystems in which they live. The center, which was founded in the 1950s to accommodate confiscated and injured wildlife, has grown considerably in recent years and is considered a premier facility for showcasing wildlife on the African continent.</p>



<p>Accommodation options are available for those traveling to Entebbe for the first time. Attendees can find a list of hotels and guest houses through booking.com <a href="https://bit.ly/entebbehotels">https://bit.ly/entebbehotels </a>or by contacting the WordCamp team at <a href="mailto:entebbe@wordcamp.org">entebbe@wordcamp.org</a> for more information and guidance. The full schedule of activities will be published soon, and we look forward to welcoming you to WordCamp Entebbe 2023!</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get Involved</strong></h2>



<p>There are several ways to get involved! Check out the details below:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Purchase Attendee Tickets:</strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/">https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/</a></li>



<li><strong>Call for Sponsors:</strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/sponsors/">https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/sponsors/</a></li>



<li><strong>Call for Speakers:</strong> <a href="https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/">https://entebbe.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/</a><br /></li>
</ul>



<p><strong> Join the discussion via #WordCampEbbs hashtag on Twitter</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/WordcampEntebbe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Tweets by WordcampEntebbe</a>
</div>";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, 12 Jan 2023 11:58:51 +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:"Kasirye Arthur";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:104:"Do The Woo Community: Reflecting on the Past and Embracing the Future for WooCommerce with Paul Maiorana";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=74261";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://dothewoo.io/2022-2023-woocommerce-paul-maiorana/";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:442:"<p>It's that time of year again when Paul Maiorana, CEO of WooCommerce, joins us for a review of the year and a looking into 2023.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/2022-2023-woocommerce-paul-maiorana/">Reflecting on the Past and Embracing the Future for WooCommerce with Paul Maiorana</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, 12 Jan 2023 11:29:00 +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:17:"Matt: Thirty-Nine";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=75200";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:34:"https://ma.tt/2023/01/thirty-nine/";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:4687:"<p>The last year of my thirties! <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/">WordPress turns twenty this year</a>. <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> is now ~2,000 people across 98 countries. There&#8217;s so much that has happened in the past decade yet it feels very much like we&#8217;re on the cusp of something even more exciting.</p>



<p>This morning started well; I pulled the hammock out of the garage (it had been hiding from the rain) and read for a bit, trying to get my 5-10 minutes of sun in the first 30 minutes <a href="https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1481842978117271560?lang=en">like Huberman suggests</a>.</p>



<p>Candidly, the last year was a really challenging one for me personally. There were some beautiful moments, and I consider myself the most lucky in my family, friends, and colleagues, yet among that same group there was a lot of loss, existential health challenges, and that weighed heavily on me. It&#8217;s also my last year to get on 40 under 40 lists! <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f602.png" alt="😂" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<p>Usually when people ask me what I want for my birthday I don&#8217;t have a good answer, but this year I do! As <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/san-francisco-bay-bridge-lights-17708825.php">Heather Knight wrote about in the SF Chronicle, the beloved Bay Lights are coming down in March</a>. This has to happen —&nbsp;the vibrations and corrosive environment of the Bay Bridge is taking lights out strand by strand. Fortunately it&#8217;s now been a decade since the lights first went up, and there&#8217;s much better technology both for the lights and how they&#8217;re mounted and attached to the suspension cables. Finally, the lights were not visible from Treasure Island or the East Bay before, but this new version 3.0 will be, which is why the artist behind the lights, <a href="http://villareal.net/">Leo Villereal</a>, is calling it Bay Lights 360.</p>



<img />



<p>Like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series">Foundation series</a>, we can&#8217;t stop the coming period of darkness from happening, but if we raise $11M we can bring the lights back. If we raise it soon we can shorten the time they&#8217;re down to just a few months, so I&#8217;m working with the 501c3 non-profit <a href="https://illuminate.org/">Illuminate</a> to help fundraise. The idea is to find ten people or organizations to put one million each, and raise the final million in a broader crowdfunding campaign, to re-light the Bay Bridge and give an incredible gift to the people from every walk of life that see the bridge, and hopefully have their spirits lifted by the art. I&#8217;ve heard 25 million people see the Bay Lights every year.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a lot to raise, but every little bit helps so <a href="https://illuminate.org/baylights360/">please donate here</a>, and if you are interested to do a larger gift please get in touch. I&#8217;m committing a million dollars to the fundraise, and myself, Illuminate director Ben Davis, and the artist <a href="http://villareal.net/">Leo Villereal</a> are happy to personally connect with anyone considering a larger donation.</p>



<p>Because of some family health reasons I&#8217;m back in lockdown, so going to try and throw an online party tonight in the &#8220;Matterverse.&#8221; We&#8217;re going to party like it&#8217;s late 2020. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f389.png" alt="🎉" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<p>All birthday posts: <a href="https://ma.tt/2003/01/bday/">19</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2004/01/so-im-20/">20</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2005/01/hot-barely-legal-matt/">21</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2006/01/matt-22/">22</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2007/01/twenty-three/">23</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2008/01/twenty-four/">24</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2009/01/twenty-five/">25</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2010/01/twenty-six/">26</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2011/01/twenty-seven/">27</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2012/01/twenty-eight/">28</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2013/01/twenty-nine/">29</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2014/01/matt-3-0/">30</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2015/01/thirty-one/">31</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2016/01/thirty-two/">32</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2017/01/thirty-three/">33</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2018/01/thirty-four/">34</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2019/01/thirty-five/">35</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2020/01/thirty-six/">36</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2021/01/thirty-seven/">37</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2022/01/thirty-eight/">38</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2023/01/thirty-nine/">39</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, 12 Jan 2023 04:37:53 +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: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:82:"WPTavern: Automattic Launches Blaze Ad Network for Jetpack and WordPress.com Sites";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=140985";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:93:"https://wptavern.com/automattic-launches-blaze-ad-network-for-jetpack-and-wordpress-com-sites";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:5113:"<p>Automattic is <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/01/11/promote-your-posts-on-wordpress-com/">bringing Tumblr&#8217;s Blaze ad tool to WordPress sites</a> with its launch today on WordPress.com and Jetpack. Blaze made its debut in April 2022, to the delight of Tumblr users who will gladly shell out cash to get people to look at their cat or <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/yu1l2g/you_know_i_had_to_do_it_to_em_it_being_ruthless/">promote a game they made</a>. It&#8217;s an affordable way to attract new followers or just send out something funny into the universe, starting at $5/day.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Note To all small Twitch streamers. Tumblr Blaze is the best advertising tool out there. It has an embedding feature allowing you to embed streams. I went from 20 to 100+ live viewers rn! <a href="https://t.co/aolZduCTEe">pic.twitter.com/aolZduCTEe</a></p>&mdash; Ian Miles Cheong's Prime Minister (@MToph91) <a href="https://twitter.com/MToph91/status/1610290440946999303?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 3, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>WordPress.com users can now to go to&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://wordpress.com/advertising">wordpress.com/advertising</a></strong>, select a site, and promote content with Blaze. Jetpack users have access to the ad network inside the WordPress.com dashboard.</p>



<img />



<p>After selecting a post, users are taken to the design wizard where they can add an image, title, a snippet, and a destination URL. The URL can be the post or page or it can direct visitors to the main website.</p>



<p>When Blaze first launched on Tumblr there was no way to target the promoted content &#8211; it just displayed to random users. Now there are a few more options. When promoting content from WordPress.com or a Jetpack-enabled site, users can narrow the audience by device: mobile, desktop, or all devices, select from a few main geographic areas (continents) or serve it everywhere. There is also a dropdown with topics of interest, but they are fairly general, e.g. Arts &amp; Entertainment, Automotive, Business, Education.</p>



<img />



<p>After selecting the audience, users can set the budget for the campaign, starting at $5 with a max daily budget of $50. With a minimum of $5/day for a week users can expect an estimated 5,900 &#8211; 8,000 impressions. For $25/day, users can expect 29,700 &#8211; 40,200, and up to 59,500 &#8211; 80,500 for $50/day. Site owners can monitor the success of their ads in the Campaigns tab.</p>



<p>Content sponsored by Blaze will be promoted across WordPress.com sites and Tumblr pages, an audience that accounts for an estimated 13.5 billion impressions per month. </p>



<p>Blazing has become somewhat of an art in the short time it has been available on Tumblr.  It will be interesting to see how ads originating from WordPress.com and Jetpack go over with the Tumblr audience.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">There's a whole code of ethics around Blaze on Tumblr basically if you use it to do anything other than shitpost people hate you, you can also buy Tumblr merch and buy fake verification (which isn't seen as a serious thing, it's just a way to support tumblr)</p>&mdash; New Year New Simisear Fan <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f400.png" alt="🐀" class="wp-smiley" /> (@LakeUncalming) <a href="https://twitter.com/LakeUncalming/status/1612677568741646342?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="tumblr-post"><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/madmadammims/700822694806044672">https://www.tumblr.com/madmadammims/700822694806044672</a></div>
</div>



<p>Creating advertising content that works across the disparate audiences between WordPress and Tumblr-powered pages may be a challenge for some site owners. Tumblr users can only <a href="https://help.tumblr.com/hc/en-us/articles/5298854249367-Tumblr-Blaze-FAQ">target audiences by location</a> for blazed posts. It&#8217;s possible that WordPress&#8217; additional targeting options can help funnel the ads to sites where they will be most well-received, but the announcement says ads will be promoted across WordPress.com and Tumblr.</p>



<p>Blaze campaigns require approval to be in compliance with Automattic&#8217;s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://automattic.com/advertising-policy/" target="_blank">Advertising Policy</a> before being published. They are currently moderated in approximately 30 minutes but this may change in the future as more users try out Blaze. </p>



<p>Automattic is treading new ground in creating its own ad network that any user across Tumblr and WordPress can tap into. It&#8217;s a strategic move to extend access to the world of WordPress, given that it&#8217;s such a large audience, and it will be interesting to see how the company improves the targeting options to meet the challenges of serving both audiences.</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, 11 Jan 2023 22:52:36 +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:107:"Post Status: Improving 5ftF Contributor Journey • Building Interactive Blocks • Layout Classes • WP20";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=146399";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://poststatus.com/improving-5ftf-contributor-journey-building-interactive-blocks-layout-classes-wp20/";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:16911:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-january-9-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (January 9, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Share your feedback about how to improve the Five for the Future contributor journey. Check out work underway on how to make interactive blocks easier to build, and take a walkthrough of layout classes in WordPress 6.1. It's time to start planning; how will you celebrate WordPress' 20th birthday? </p></div>


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



<div id="kt-info-box_adc852-65" class="wp-block-kadence-infobox"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fe_code"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">Improvements: Five for the Future, Interactive Blocks, and Layout Classes</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text">5&#x20e3; <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/01/09/request-for-feedback-how-can-we-improve-the-five-for-the-future-contributor-journey/">Request for Feedback: How can we Improve the Five for the Future Contributor Journey?</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f469-1f3fb-200d-1f3a8.png" alt="👩🏻‍🎨" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/01/11/fse-program-testing-call-20-find-your-style/">FSE Program Testing Call #20: Find Your Style</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3d7.png" alt="🏗" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/update-on-the-work-to-make-building-interactive-blocks-easier/">Update on the work to make building interactive blocks easier</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4f0.png" alt="📰" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/01/11/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/">A walk-through of layout classes in WordPress 6.1</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/wordpress-is-turning-20-lets-celebrate/">WordPress is Turning 20: Let’s Celebrate!</a><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>



<h2 id="h-news">News<a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-3/"></a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/wordpress-is-turning-20-lets-celebrate/">WordPress is Turning 20: Let’s Celebrate!</a></li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_121b9e-cb"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-51 wp-block-columns">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-community">Community</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/01/11/community-team-training-using-learn-wordpress-at-your-wordpress-meetup/">Community Team Training: Using Learn WordPress at your WordPress Meetup</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/01/04/community-team-meeting-agenda-for-5-january-2023/">Community Team Meeting Agenda for 5 January, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/update-on-the-work-to-make-building-interactive-blocks-easier/">Update on the work to make building interactive blocks easier</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/10/a-week-in-core-january-9-2022/">A Week in Core – January 9, 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/09/fields-api-kick-off-chat-summary-january-5th-2023/">Fields API Kick-off Chat Summary: January 5th, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/06/core-editor-improvement-advancing-the-site-editor-experience/">Core Editor Improvement: Advancing the Site Editor experience</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-9-4-january/">What’s new in Gutenberg 14.9? (4 January)</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/10/editor-chat-agenda-11-january-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: 11 January 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/10/editor-chat-summary-wednesday-4-january-2023/">Editor chat summary: Wednesday, 4 January 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/09/dev-chat-agenda-january-11-2023/">Dev Chat agenda, January 11, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/08/dev-chat-summary-january-4-2023/">Dev Chat summary, January 4, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-blog">Developer Blog</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/01/11/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/">A walk-through of layout classes in WordPress 6.1</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/01/10/documentation-team-discussion-on-the-2023-community-summit-call-for-submissions/">Documentation Team Discussion on the 2023 Community Summit Call for Submissions</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/01/07/there-is-work-in-progress-in-helphub-documentation/">There is work in progress in HelpHub (Documentation)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/01/04/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-january-10-2023/">Agenda for Docs Team Bi-Weekly January 10, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/09/documentation-team-update-january-9-2023/">Documentation Team Update – January 9, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-hosting"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting">Hosting</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/12/28/2022-recap/">WordPress Hosting Team 2022 recap</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-marketing"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing">Marketing</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/01/10/2023-marketing-team-new-meeting-time-and-new-team-reps/">2023 Marketing Team: new meeting time and new team reps</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-meta"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta">Meta</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/12/22/two-factor-auth-progress-for-wordpress-org/">Two-Factor Auth progress for WordPress.org</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-openverse"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse">Openverse</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/01/10/community-meeting-recap-10-january-2023/">Community Meeting Recap (10 January 2023)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-performance"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/">Performance</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/10/performance-team-meeting-summary-10-january-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 10 January 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-polyglots">Polyglots</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/01/10/weekly-polyglots-chat-jan-11-2023-0700-utc/">Weekly Polyglots Chat – Jan. 11, 2023 (07:00 UTC)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-plugins">Plugins</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/12/21/plugin-guideline-update-community-code-of-conduct/">Plugin Guideline Update: Community Code of Conduct</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/12/16/plugins-themes-categorization/">Plugins/themes categorization</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/10/plugin-review-team-9-jan-2023/">Plugin Review Team – 9 Jan 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-project">Project</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/01/09/request-for-feedback-how-can-we-improve-the-five-for-the-future-contributor-journey/">Request for Feedback: How can we Improve the Five for the Future Contributor Journey?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/12/21/announcement-new-wordpress-incident-response-team/">Announcement: New WordPress Incident Response Team</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-support"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support">Support</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/">Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/01/11/fse-program-testing-call-20-find-your-style/">FSE Program Testing Call #20: Find Your Style</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/01/04/proposal-to-update-test-handbook-homepage/">Proposal to Update Test Handbook Homepage</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/09/test-team-update-9-january-2023/">Test Team Update: 9 January 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-themes"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/01/09/themes-team-meeting-agenda-for-january-10-2023/">Themes team meeting agenda for January 10, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/10/themes-team-update-january-10-2023/">Themes team update January 10, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/individual-learner-survey/">How did you learn WordPress?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/01/09/meeting-agenda-for-january-10-2022/">Meeting Agenda for January 10, 2022</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=create-block-theme-%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B0%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%81%A7%E8%87%AA%E5%88%86%E3%81%AE%E3%83%96%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%86%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%82%92%E4%BD%9C%E3%82%8D-2">Create Block Theme プラグインで自分のブロックテーマを作ろう！</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=create-block-theme-%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B0%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%81%A7%E8%87%AA%E5%88%86%E3%81%AE%E3%83%96%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%86%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E3%82%92%E4%BD%9C%E3%82%8D%E3%81%86">Create Block Theme プラグインで自分のブロックテーマを作ろう！</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=images-on-the-web-past-present-and-future">Images on the web — past present and future</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep9-woocommerce-settings-and-faq-bangla-2">EP9: WooCommerce Settings and FAQ | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep8-introduction-to-products-various-types-of-product-bangla-2">EP8: Introduction to Products (Various types of Product) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep7-introduction-to-woocommerce-installation-checkout-flow-bangla-2">EP7: Introduction to WooCommerce (Installation, Checkout flow) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=live-stream-building-an-advanced-query-loop-block-variation-plugin">Live stream: Building an Advanced Query Loop block variation plugin</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=live-stream-reviewing-developer-focused-features-in-gutenberg-15-0">Live stream: Reviewing developer-focused features in Gutenberg 15.0</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=live-stream-reviewing-developer-focused-features-in-gutenberg-14-9">Live stream: Reviewing developer-focused features in Gutenberg 14.9</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-live-stream-4">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-live-stream-3">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-live-stream-2">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep8-introduction-to-products-various-types-of-product-bangla">EP8: Introduction to Products (Various types of Product) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep9-woocommerce-settings-and-faq-bangla">EP9: WooCommerce Settings and FAQ | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep7-introduction-to-woocommerce-installation-checkout-flow-bangla">EP7: Introduction to WooCommerce (Installation, Checkout flow) | Bangla</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-tutorials"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials">Tutorials</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/tools-site-health/">Tools: Site Health</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/introduction-to-theme-json/">Introduction to theme.json</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>



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



<h2 id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.php.net/ChangeLog-8.php#8.2.1">PHP 8.2.1 Changelog</a></li>



<li><a href="https://getcomposer.org/changelog/2.5.1">Composer 2.5.1 Changelog</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/npm/cli/compare/v9.1.3...v9.2.0">NPM 9.2.0 Changelog</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status' <a href="https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It's also available in <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter">our newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png" alt="💌" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
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<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/">LinkedIn</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png" alt="💼" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
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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:"Wed, 11 Jan 2023 18:08:54 +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:"Courtney Robertson";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:59:"WPTavern: ClassicPress Community Votes to Re-Fork 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=140878";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://wptavern.com/classicpress-community-votes-to-re-fork-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:3772:"<p>In December 2022, the ClassicPress community <a href="https://wptavern.com/classicpress-at-a-crossroads-directors-consider-re-forking-wordpress">voted on whether to re-fork WordPress</a> or continue on with the project as-is. As WordPress continues to evolve, ClassicPress fell behind in pursuit of PHP 8+ compatibility. The fork is based on WordPress 4.9 and users are increasingly limited in what plugins will work with the five-year-old codebase. </p>



<p>In a <a href="https://forums.classicpress.net/t/the-future-of-classicpress-discussion/4480/31">discussion</a> limited to ClassicPress core contributors, Viktor Nagornyy, one of the project’s directors, announced the results of the vote: <strong>&#8220;The option to re-fork has 20 votes while continue-as-is has 18.&#8221;  </strong>Nagornyy summarized previous discussions and suggested an approach that would be more realistic for the project&#8217;s limited contributors:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>ClassicPress can’t be WordPress without Gutenberg, but it also can’t be its own CMS with a small core team at this time. There are simply not enough developers to make progress without backporting code from WP to move away from WP.</p>



<p>An almost even split in the poll suggests the best option might be a hybrid one, find a compromise solution that will satisfy both sides.</p>



<p>With a small core team, we have to find ways to be more efficient, to get more done with less. The only way to do that is to leverage all the work that’s done by WP contributors. As the core team grows, we can always explore the possibility of splitting away from WP but at this point in time, it’s simply not feasible.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Some participants in the previous discussion saw re-forking as postponing the inevitable, kicking the can down the road until the next re-fork, but it is the only option if users want to retain compatibility with the rest of the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p>&#8220;If you read recent threads, you find out that the community expects plugin compatibility with WordPress… another reason for the re-fork option,&#8221; ClassicPress core committer Álvaro Franz said.</p>



<p>Franz, who is also the author of the WP-CMS fork based on WordPress 6.0, previously <a href="https://forums.classicpress.net/t/community-poll-the-future-of-classicpress/4446/46">said</a> he would be unwilling to help with a continuation of the current version based on WordPress 4.9.</p>



<p>&#8220;It [ClassicPress] doesn’t have to be a competition (and it never could compete with WordPress anyways), but it can be a leaner version, for people who are already disabling Gutenberg via plugins, for developers who want a different approach to the way they develop their projects (closer to &#8216;the classic&#8217; experience, but yet… modern!),&#8221; Franz <a href="https://wptavern.com/classicpress-at-a-crossroads-directors-consider-re-forking-wordpress#comment-435736">said</a>.</p>



<p>&#8220;Eventually, it won’t make sense to run a fresh copy of WordPress to then go and install a plugin that &#8216;disables&#8217; half of it. What’s the point? Why not have a version that covers that specific use case?&#8221;</p>



<p>As part of Nagornyy&#8217;s proposed hybrid approach, he suggested the project retain some changes that were introduced in ClassicPress in v1.x, such as the privacy-oriented changes (anonymizing data CP sends to APIs), the news widget, and ensure that all API endpoints use ClassicPress APIs as in v1.x.</p>



<p>The discussion continues around how to proceed with the fork. ClassicPress contributors are leaning towards using Franz&#8217;s WP-CMS fork based on WordPress 6.0 but have not finalized the details yet.</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, 11 Jan 2023 15:10:57 +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: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:63:"WPTavern: #58 – Lax Mariappan on How Headless WordPress Works";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=140972";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/podcast/58-lax-mariappan-on-how-headless-wordpress-works";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:56075:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox has a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how Headless WordPress works.</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. If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, well, I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Lax Mariappan. Lax is a web developer based in the Philippines. He&#8217;s an open source enthusiast and lover of all things WordPress. Lax has been tinkering with websites since high school. But it all changed when he discovered WordPress in 2010. Lax currently works as a backend engineer at WebDevStudios.</p>



<p>We talked today about Headless WordPress, and it&#8217;s a complex topic. Headless is the concept of decoupling the WordPress admin from the front end of the site. WordPress will continue to work as expected, but the presentation layer will be done by a different technology. React Gatsby and Remix being some popular choices.</p>



<p>This implementation of WordPress is complex, requires technical knowledge above and beyond that needed for a more typical WordPress install. But it has its benefits.</p>



<p>Lax talks through all of this in great detail. How keeping on top of all the additional dependencies Headless WordPress requires can be time consuming. How it can create difficulties for content editors who don&#8217;t always get to see what their work will actually look like in real time. Why this approach to WordPress can take more time and resources during the build.</p>



<p>Lex explains how these problems typically crop up, and how it&#8217;s possible to plan ahead and build in solutions for all the problems that you might encounter.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve ever thought about going headless with WordPress, then the podcast today is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Lax Mariappan.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Lax Mariappan. Hello Lax.</p>



<p>[00:03:30] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Hello, Nathan.</p>



<p>[00:03:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very nice to have you with us on the show today. I have to commend you for your staying power, because Lax and I have tried to record this episode a couple of times and he&#8217;s been incredibly, incredibly thoughtful about getting his, all of his equipment and everything working. So thank you, first of all, I would like to express my gratitude for you staying the course.</p>



<p>But before we get into the podcast, Lax, I wonder if you wouldn&#8217;t mind spending a moment just introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you are, who you work for, how long you&#8217;ve been using WordPress, all of those kind of things.</p>



<p>[00:04:06] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Thank you. It&#8217;s good to be on WP Tavern, it&#8217;s one of my favorite publications, and also the favorite podcast. So I&#8217;m Lax, Lax Mariappan. I&#8217;m from India, and also I&#8217;m from Philippines. So I would say I live in both countries, and I use WordPress since my school days, like 2009. So I was looking for a platform to build a website for an event or something, and then I found out Blogger versus WordPress, and I liked WordPress more even that time.</p>



<p>So since then, I&#8217;m using WordPress almost every day. And my first job I got started working as a PHP developer, I would say, and then fully focused on WordPress. And I wrote my first plugin in 2011. It&#8217;s a very simple one. It&#8217;s now kind of obsolete because Facebook changed it a lot. So I wrote a plugin for something to fetch Facebook feed. So, and then my journey goes on. Right now, I work as a backend engineer at WebDevStudios. So where I get a chance to learn and work more with headless CMS every day almost.</p>



<p>[00:05:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Your work at WebDevStudios, I don&#8217;t know a great deal about the company, but my impression of the company is that you work with, how should we describe it? Enterprise clients. You&#8217;re dealing with fairly large projects. I would imagine sizable budgets. Those kind of things, right?</p>



<p>[00:05:27] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, yes. Enterprise level.</p>



<p>[00:05:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So when we decided we were going to have this conversation, Lax introduced the subject to me of headless WordPress. Now this is a word which I imagine some of you have heard before. Maybe some of you have never heard the word before. Perhaps there&#8217;s a subset of you which have experimented with it, but I&#8217;m expecting that the majority of WordPress users have not.</p>



<p>So, first of all Lax, would you mind giving us a very, in depth I suppose is the right word. Give us an analysis of what headless WordPress is because I&#8217;m sure many people think they know what it is, but perhaps they don&#8217;t.</p>



<p>[00:06:06] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> So headless, or decoupled CMS, so first we all know content management system, right? So WordPress, we are using WordPress now as a content management system. It started out as a blogging platform. We used it mainly for blogging. And then WordPress introduced custom post types, taxonomies and all that sort of stuff.</p>



<p>So we are now using WordPress to build simple to complex websites. Forums. Some people use it for their colleges, universities as a social media platform, and some of them use it for a job board and everything, right? So we have plugin for everything and we can customize it and we use it.</p>



<p>So when it comes to the traditional CMS, we call that as monolithic. I hope I&#8217;m not using too much jargon here. Monolithic in the sense it has everything into it. So for example, if you go to a website, the header, footer, the sidebar, and the content that you see and the forms and everything that comes from the same CMS itself. So it is going to be, let&#8217;s say, in the case of WordPress, it&#8217;s built mostly with PHP and JavaScript.</p>



<p>So everything is going to be PHP template with a bit of JavaScript and CSS to it. But when you say on the contrast, headless CMS, it means, so you can consider that as a, I would not say person. Maybe something like, you can imagine something that doesn&#8217;t have a head. So in the sense the body is the same, head is different.</p>



<p>So you can imagine that as, you are going to use the same admin panel and you are going to have the same WordPress features. You can add the content, you can add menus, you can edit anything, you can add users, all that stuff. But when I view the website, so it&#8217;s not going to be your theme. So it&#8217;s not the typical way of how WordPress gets rendered.</p>



<p>So instead we will be decoupling it. So that is WordPress admin will stay on another site. It can be on a subdomain or a sub folder, but the front end is going to be a different platform. So it&#8217;s going to be hosted in a, mostly a JavaScript based stuff. So you can use either React based frameworks like React itself or Gatsby, Next.js or Remix, or anything that you like.</p>



<p>And also you can either go in another route as well. So you can make it like a fully static website, or you can render it on every time as a server side rendering as well. So every call will go to the server and renders.</p>



<p>Okay, so now we can call that a small intro about headless. You may already know this one. It became a buzzword a couple of years ago, right? But now everyone wants to go as headless. I see that company goes headless, or my competitor goes headless. So I want to go that way. But, unpopular opinion. Maybe you might hear some other people say that too. Headless is not for everyone, or I would say not for every use case.</p>



<p>It depends on how much content that you publish. What are your goals and what you want to achieve. So headless is good, it&#8217;s performant, it&#8217;s fast, secure, and it gives you more freedom and flexibility, especially in terms of performance it&#8217;s really good. But I would say it&#8217;s not the something like you should go headless. It&#8217;s not the answer.</p>



<p>[00:09:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So essentially you&#8217;re saying that there are scenarios where this is desirable, but there&#8217;s going to be other scenarios where WordPress, in the traditional sense of the word. The regular WordPress that you download, perhaps use a hosting company and it&#8217;s all driven by PHP. The normal way of doing WordPress. That might be the best solution for lots of people.</p>



<p>Okay, so we&#8217;ve got our WordPress website, which we can interact with, and then the content that comes out of that website is pushed to something else. And probably we&#8217;ll get into what the options are there. But let&#8217;s take the use case of a company which comes to you and says, okay, we&#8217;ve heard this buzzword. We think that we want to go headless.</p>



<p>What are the benefits of going headless? Let&#8217;s forget about all the problems that might be associated with it. Can we just iterate through the things that you will gain if you manage to pull off a headless WordPress website. Now, I know there&#8217;s going to be all sorts of different scenarios there, but maybe just pick out the low hanging fruit. Some of the things which you believe are really beneficial.</p>



<p>[00:10:17] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah. The first and foremost, or the popular one, is the performance. So WordPress uses PHP templates. We will do everything with PHP and Javascript and also a little bit of caching to render our traditional CMS like traditional pages. If you use a normal WordPress installation with a theme. So that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s get rendered.</p>



<p>So there you can see it depends on the hosting company as well, and also how much plugins that you use and how you configured them. So that affects the performance of a site. But when it comes to headless everything is going to be bundled, and there will be how a normal JavaScript based application gets rendered.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s going to be a modern web application where you have control over, for example, if your page doesn&#8217;t use certain CSS classes, those CSS will not get loaded for that page. So I would say the assets that are loaded, it will be less. And the images will be more optimized. In either case, like in traditional too you can optimize images, but it&#8217;s like the performance is the first one, I would say.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s going to be both developers will love it and also the site owners, and also, let&#8217;s say marketers, Everyone will like the performance aspect of it. And in terms of headless, I would say developers will like it, especially in terms of, so you can repurpose the content. So if you are having a CMS, WordPress as a headless CMS, you can use that same endpoint, get the data and display it in a different formats quickly.</p>



<p>Other than a WordPress theme. So for example, if you&#8217;re using a WordPress theme, you have to create multiple templates. So this is a template for mobile, and this is something that, for example, if you want to use it for a landing page, you may have to do some small or extra changes. But when it comes to headless, you can just customize it in a way that you want to.</p>



<p>For example, I want to have a landing page. I don&#8217;t want certain stuff to be there. So you can turn on, off certain components, that&#8217;s it. So it&#8217;s like you can render the blocks and render the content faster. So developers and designers will like it. And also, in terms of the security, that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m more interested in cybersecurity especially. When people say WordPress sites are not secure, that triggers me actually. Yeah, I do get angry.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s like, you don&#8217;t have to worry about that. So you don&#8217;t have to worry about changing your login page url. Adding captcha to your login form, all that stuff. Because that URL is going to be safe and secure. No one knows where you are hosted your CMS.</p>



<p>[00:12:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just interrupt there? So could you explain that, because I imagine there&#8217;s a bunch of people scratching their head at this point. Because normally, let&#8217;s say you have a website, it&#8217;s example.com. You&#8217;re going to go to example.com/wp-admin, and there is your login page. But there&#8217;s something in between here. I&#8217;m not sure that we explained that quite. So just explain why the login is secure. Explain where it is and why it&#8217;s not normal WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:13:19] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, so I mean, normal WebPress is also secure but people can guess it, right? Say example.com/wp-admin, so they know. They can see from the source code and the page source, they can see oh, this looks like a WordPress site. And then they can guess the admin url. So slash wp-admin, it&#8217;ll redirect them to the login page, right.</p>



<p>But when it comes to headless, the example.com will be hosted somewhere, and the front end that you see will be different. So for example, let&#8217;s say CMS is your WordPress installation, all WP. So you can call that like wp.example.com. So that&#8217;s where your WordPress stays in. But when you go to the example.com, that&#8217;s your front end, so that&#8217;s just JavaScript and html. So it&#8217;s like, if somebody wants to hack your site or somebody wants to, just guess what will be the admin url. So they cannot.</p>



<p>[00:14:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a difficult concept to understand if you haven&#8217;t encountered this before. But what you&#8217;ve got basically is a WordPress website, which is the container for the content, but it isn&#8217;t the website and we&#8217;re not used to that in traditional WordPress. You go to example.com/ wp-admin, get redirected, log in, do all the things, and click publish, and as soon as you click publish, it will be present on the website. That&#8217;s not the way that this is working because the WordPress website is completely decoupled from the thing which is presenting it to the world, right?</p>



<p>[00:14:48] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Completely decoupled.</p>



<p>[00:14:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So given that, there&#8217;s no connection between, okay, here&#8217;s my website at example.com and where I might log in. And because of that there isn&#8217;t the capability to just guess the login page and then bruteforce an attack and so on. So in terms of security, it offers that benefit. The thing which people are most worried about, somebody getting your admin password going in and spoiling your site. That&#8217;s highly unlikely because they simply won&#8217;t know where to look.</p>



<p>[00:15:23] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah. And also, so for example certain normal pages like comments, so that&#8217;s where we get a lot of spam, right? So comments will go to comments.php. When you submit a form without any data, or maybe if it&#8217;s spam data, it just goes there, right? But when it comes to headless, we will be using some extra customization for the comments and everything.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s not going to be the data will store as comments in the database, and it&#8217;ll be, you can view them as comments in the admin panel. But when you are viewing it in the site, so you are reading a blog post, you have a comment form, so that form is HTML and JavaScript. So that&#8217;s not how a typical, a normal WordPress form, normal comments form.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s where you will get less spam as well. So you don&#8217;t have to worry about that too. Like people submitting spam data and also any other form. So that&#8217;s another thing. And you don&#8217;t have to worry about any other security related stuff, because it&#8217;s just static.</p>



<p>So people cannot do anything or manipulate data. So it&#8217;s going to be just HTML stuff. Whatever they can do is just view the data. So I would say in the headless, so if you are viewing some pages or we are in a archive page and post archive, news archive, any archive page or any other page that does the data and fetches the data from the database, all that stuff.</p>



<p>So all that stuff will be protected routes. So people cannot easily guess. Sometimes you might encounter database related attacks, right. So you may hear cross site scripting attack or any other stuff like, somebody trying to get data either they pull your data or they want to insert some other data to the database. That&#8217;s not the case.</p>



<p>Everything is going to be static, like just html, and it&#8217;s only read only. So people are not going to input any data. And the input will be just maybe a comments form, contact us form, something like that. And that will be handled. It depends on what form provider you are using, or how you configure it, but still it&#8217;s more secure that way.</p>



<p>[00:17:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So just to reiterate the point one more time, just in case anybody hasn&#8217;t been paying attention. We have our WordPress website. It is used by the developers, by the content creators, by the editors. They do their normal work inside of WordPress, but the thing which is being viewed on the front end by the population at large is completely separate.</p>



<p>You&#8217;re just sucking the data out of WordPress and putting it into whatever you like. The security&#8217;s fairly obvious, you&#8217;ve explained that really well. The performance, obviously, if all that you are showing is static html, essentially. That&#8217;s going to load really, really quickly. Nothing needs to be built at the time that the page is viewed and so on and so forth. It&#8217;s already been created.</p>



<p>This all sounds amazing and of course that raises the question, why aren&#8217;t we all doing it? And you have given us, in the show notes you&#8217;ve given me, three different things which we perhaps should talk about, and some of them, you explained the problem and then we&#8217;ll get to the solution.</p>



<p>So the first one that you talk about is dependency hell, you&#8217;ve described it as. And, I&#8217;m guessing that having a headless site is not straightforward. We&#8217;re very used in WordPress to, novices can install WordPress incredibly quickly. You basically upload a zip file and unpack it and connect it to a database, and these days, you know, you go to a hosting company and not even that. You just click a button and, wow, there&#8217;s your WordPress website 30 seconds later.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m guessing that this is not the case for headless. There must be all sorts of complex layers of things going on in the background, and you say that in many cases it can become very difficult. Dependency hell. So describe the problem of all the dependencies.</p>



<p>[00:19:13] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> So when you have a WordPress installation, we will be installing plugins, right? You might be, if you are using WordPress for a while, you are already aware of the jQuery migrate plugin. All that stuff. So WordPress uses jQuery even now. So jQuery is a dependency that WordPress requires. WordPress depends on jQuery in admin panel, and also on the front end.</p>



<p>So if you want to get rid of jQuery, it&#8217;s kind of, WordPress may not be the same, if you want to eliminate that. Because WordPress depends on it. So it&#8217;s something like, let&#8217;s say you cannot say that as a oxygen, but it&#8217;s something that we all need it. So we need that to survive. So WordPress needs jQuery to work normally.</p>



<p>So similar case, when you are building a headless site, you will be requiring a lot of frameworks, libraries, and also packages. So for example, if I&#8217;m going to choose Next.js as my front end platform, front end framework. So Next.js is built with React. If I want to use Next.js, I may want to use some other Next.js related libraries.</p>



<p>So it is something like if you are on Android, you may want to add extra apps on your phone. If you are an iPhone, you&#8217;ll be adding some more extra apps to extend, right? It&#8217;s the same case. Similar to plugins. Instead of that plugins, we will be adding packages. So that packages helps the developers to add extra features that we need.</p>



<p>So the problem here comes in is, everything gets stacked in and one will be dependent on another. So, for example, if someone is installing a package like for SEO, and maybe that package will require something else. And let&#8217;s say if Nathan is maintaining SEO package and I installed it, and for example, for whatever reason, Nathan becomes a musician and he doesn&#8217;t, he is not interested in SEO anymore.</p>



<p>So he may not be more active in maintaining that dependency, maintaining that plugin or that package. So what happens is I&#8217;ll be waiting for him to fix the bug or some errors. Or I will waiting for him to upgrade to the lightest version. But it&#8217;s not the case, right? So, my Next.js package will be waiting for Nathan, so it&#8217;s like I&#8217;m depending on him, but he&#8217;s not available. So in that case, I have to go and do that work as well. So that adds to our development timeline.</p>



<p>And then, so this is just one package and one scenario. So this happens with multiple packages and stuff. And this is not just Node or NPM packages. It also happens to WordPress stuff as well. So, for example, let&#8217;s say we have a popular forms plugin, or we have a popular slider or any other plugin.</p>



<p>So you will install that plugin and you want that plugin to work with headless. So how we are using headless, it&#8217;s the data is stored in the WordPress, and we want to get the data through either Rest API. It&#8217;s a method that we, you know, you go to a url, you ask the WordPress, hey, give me this data and it&#8217;s going to give. Or you&#8217;ll be using GraphQL. It&#8217;s the same. You go to an endpoint and you&#8217;re going to say, hey, I&#8217;m looking for this post. I want five posts from this date. So it&#8217;s going to give that data as well.</p>



<p>So either you use Rest API or GraphQL. The problem is a plugin that you are using, your popular forms plugin, your popular slider, or any other plugin that you&#8217;re using. LMS plugin, E-commerce plugin or any plugin, like a payment gateway. So you have a plugin and you want to use it with headless. So that plugin should work with the Rest API or Graph QL. So if that doesn&#8217;t work, if that doesn&#8217;t give you the flexibility, and then you are still stuck there.</p>



<p>Because you cannot go and create everything on your own, right? So we cannot reinvent all the wheels. We don&#8217;t have time to create everything from scratch. So that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s like that becomes a bottleneck. So you are like, hey, I found the plugin. I started working on it. It works up to this mark, but it&#8217;s not a hundred percent. So it&#8217;s like it does its job 80%. Now I have to go fill in that 20%. It adds to the budget, it adds to the development timeline. So that&#8217;s the dependency hell.</p>



<p>[00:23:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So in the case of all of the technology, which is in the background if you like, which we haven&#8217;t really talked about too much, but like you said, the things which you are requiring from third party developers. There&#8217;s a dependency there, and it&#8217;s very similar to the dependency that you may have on plugins, you know, you want them to be updated and so on, but you are adding extra dependencies. And of course, the more dependencies you&#8217;ve got, the more costly, time consuming it is.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m guessing that most of the things that you are depending on, in addition to WordPress and you described what a few of those were, you could, I suppose, do some due diligence and figure out which projects have been well maintained, updated frequently, and so on. And I guess in the open source world, much of the dependencies that you&#8217;re using will be open sourced, so you could fork them. But again, you are creating probably a large amount of work for yourself and your team.</p>



<p>[00:24:13] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah that&#8217;s true. Well said. So it&#8217;s like, since it is open source, it&#8217;s good. Like lot of reviewers. We have a lot of eyes on the code, and you can fork it. You have the freedom to do whatever you want. But still you are looking for a solution and that becomes a problem. You have to fix that as well. And that adds to the, another dependency, another dependency. It becomes a cycle that you cannot escape sometimes.</p>



<p>[00:24:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess this is a bit like a seesaw. You know, on the one hand you described all of the benefits, performance, security, and so on, of headless. And then on the other side is, is all of the things that we are now describing. You know, the dependencies and so on. You&#8217;ve got to weigh up at the beginning of the project whether one thing is worth all of the time and effort that may be required to do it.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m guessing in many cases, certainly at the enterprise level, the answer&#8217;s going to be yes, because the budget is there, we can put enough bodies to work to make all of this happen, and if we need to fork things, there&#8217;s enough people on the team that can do that and maintain the project, which has fallen into disuse. But for a little project the seasaw may tip heavily against something like headless just because of the things that you&#8217;ve described there.</p>



<p>Okay. So that was our first thing, dependency hell. The second thing that you wanted to talk about was the fact that in the WordPress world, especially in the last five or six years or so, we are really used to what you see is what you get, WYSIWYG. You save something in WordPress, you publish something and you have almost a hundred percent certainty of what it&#8217;s going to look like. The backend looks like the front end, especially with things like page builders and so on. But you say that that&#8217;s not always the case with headless solutions. Why is that?</p>



<p>[00:25:55] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> We will be creating custom blocks. So, either there are a popular way of building now custom blocks is with ACF. So you all might be aware of and using it, even though you are not a programmer, you might be using it, right? So ACF is easy to install and create some custom fields. So you can use ACF to block, to build blocks for the site.</p>



<p>So those blocks can be used or you can build your own custom blocks. You can use any block starters like, frameworks that are available now. Or you can just follow our, WordPress comes with packages that you can on build command, so you can just build your block in a matter of seconds.</p>



<p>But still, all this stuff. So for example, if you are having custom blocks, I&#8217;m not talking about just normal blocks, like where you add a paragraph or image or something very simple. That is easy to build and that&#8217;s easy to see. That&#8217;s different. But I&#8217;m here talking about something complex.</p>



<p>So for example, you can imagine that as an Elementor widget or, some other items that it comes with the page builders. So, let&#8217;s say a slider, maybe tabs, accordions, all that stuff, right? So that can be added through the blocks itself. But you cannot preview them, because when you add them in the admin panel and we add them in the content. Those content gets, you know, you can choose like, oh, this is the tab title, this is the content.</p>



<p>And you can keep adding the content, but you don&#8217;t know how it&#8217;s going to render in the front end. But let&#8217;s say if you are using some, there are a lot of free blocks and also even premium blocks available. So if you are using a block to build them, and then using the normal WordPress installation. Or you can use WordPress with the full site editing, the modern themes, or the hybrid themes, like old plus full site editing themes.</p>



<p>Still they both work well. Like you can preview, oh, okay, this is the tab I added this content. I can&#8217;t view this one. But when it comes to ACF blocks or other certain custom built blocks, you cannot preview them.</p>



<p>So when a editor or a user adds content, they may get lost. So I have a slider. I want to add three, four images to it. I may get lost. Oh, what&#8217;s the third image? What I have added there, and how it looks? Is the images correct? Is the text rendered properly or should I reduce any title or text or anything, right? So all this stuff becomes a little tricky. And also sometimes it becomes a pain for the content writers, content editors, and also the site owners.</p>



<p>[00:28:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So in the normal, traditional WordPress, let&#8217;s say we&#8217;re creating a page, we add a page, and we use whatever tool it is that we want to use for that. We add in some blocks. We are perhaps using Elementor, whatever it may be. And we click publish and then we are able to immediately view that because WordPress is working in the traditional sense of the word. The page gets pushed through the templating engine and it&#8217;s rendered with its template and we can see it right away.</p>



<p>But because that&#8217;s not happening here. And the mechanism for rendering that page is entirely different. You can&#8217;t necessarily view it immediately. Have I kind of encapsulated that? What you are doing in the backend, because it&#8217;s decoupled with the presentation layer on the front end, you can&#8217;t necessarily always see it?</p>



<p>[00:29:16] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, so that&#8217;s the challenge. So the solution here is to customize the way you built. So for example, we can give them a preview button so they can preview what are the slides, and how they look. And they can see that immediately in the editor itself. Like when they are adding content in the block editor, they can see it.</p>



<p>And also the other way is to have a button, a preview button. So that will preview before the content gets published. So, you can change the workflow. So if somebody hits, instead of publish, you can have like a preview button or keep it as a draft. So that way it&#8217;s like nothing goes to the front end without your approval or preview, right? So you have to preview it and see, oh, make sure everything looks correct, and then you can say, hey, I want to publish it. Yes, confirm, publish it, and then it goes to the frontend.</p>



<p>[00:30:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s fascinating. That&#8217;s really ingenious. So, because we can&#8217;t necessarily see it on the frontend, you and your team have built a custom preview system. So on a block by block basis, you can see what that block will look like when it&#8217;s rendered. So in the example of your slider, presumably where we&#8217;ve got three or four fields. We&#8217;ve uploaded maybe some text, we&#8217;ve uploaded an image, and it&#8217;s just a bunch of fields. Normally we&#8217;d click publish and we&#8217;d go to the page and preview the page and we&#8217;d see it right away. But in your scenario, you are going to hit a button inside the block to show what that block and that block alone will look like. Have I understood that?</p>



<p>[00:30:48] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s what we did. Because the users, they are used to the traditional WordPress. And especially that was with classic editor, I mean the old editor. So if you insert an image, they can see it&#8217;s an image. And if you insert something, you can see. And we are all used to the page builder era, right? So if you add a accordion, you can see how the accordion is going to look.</p>



<p>But when it comes to headless, all this stuff is going to differ. So, the tabs, accordions, sliders, and also anything else, any other custom stuff that we built, we added a preview button, and when you click on the preview, you can see that right away.</p>



<p>Then you can make sure like, oh, the colors are correct, the image is correct, and everything renders properly. Because sometimes if you are not looking at the content and adding content, you might miss some data, right? So you might have missed a small setting that says full width, or you know, boxed. So then you feel like, oh, why this looks so awful. Oh, I&#8217;ve missed this full width button. So that&#8217;s how the preview button works.</p>



<p>[00:31:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So if I&#8217;m looking at the block and it&#8217;s a, let&#8217;s stick with the slider just for the sake of it, and I&#8217;ve uploaded my images and whatever fields were required and I click the preview. Does it literally happen inside that block? Or is this some kind of modal which pops up and shows things? Or is it, is it literally taking over the block itself?</p>



<p>[00:32:09] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Ah, it&#8217;ll be within the block. Like it will replace, so for example, if you have a block and you are adding some content to it, and when you click on the preview, it&#8217;ll replace where you are adding the content, right? It&#8217;ll replace the form. Form of the block where you are saying like, hey, this is the title, this is the subheading, this is the description. Instead of that, it&#8217;ll just render the titles, heading and description.</p>



<p>[00:32:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, and then you toggle that off again once you&#8217;re, once you&#8217;re happy. So, ah, that&#8217;s really interesting. So the workflow there is really very different. And I&#8217;m presuming that after a period of time, the people who are editing, creating this content, that just becomes part of the process? They just understand that, okay, rather than viewing the whole page or whatever it may be, post whatever, I&#8217;m just viewing this little bit, and I&#8217;ve done it several times now and I&#8217;m confident that if it looks right inside the block preview, then I can click publish, wait for everything to happen, and hopefully that page will go live. And, it&#8217;s just a different workflow that you have to get used to. But once you&#8217;ve done it several times, it&#8217;s, familiar and normal.</p>



<p>[00:33:14] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, it becomes part of the workflow. And also, like we discussed earlier, your site will be like, CMS.example.com. And the front end will be on example.com. Sorry, every time you have to go to example.com/about, example.com slash contact us. Instead of that we will have a preview button. So, you can preview each block and you, if you, or feel like, hey, I want to see how the whole page looks like, you can click that preview, and that will take you, or that will show you immediately, oh, this is how the front end, like example.com/the page will look like.</p>



<p>[00:33:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point. We&#8217;re so used to the preview button being connected to the URL in question, because it&#8217;s being rendered by WordPress. You click the preview page button or whatever it may be, and it takes you to the correct place. In this case, there&#8217;s no connection between what the URL will be and where you currently are, so yeah, that&#8217;s fascinating.</p>



<p>Just as a bit of an aside. We haven&#8217;t got into this, but I think it would be a good topic to discuss for a couple of minutes. If WordPress is separated from the presentation layer, this sort of headless notion. How often does the website get regenerated, if you know what I mean? So for example, if we click publish in our headless WordPress website, what is typical there? Are you going to generate the page immediately and store it as static html? Or do some clients have different expectations there? You know, for example, if you are a, a site which needs to publish things regularly, perhaps you need that capability.</p>



<p>I click publish. I want that page to be live within a matter of moments. Or it may be that you&#8217;ve got a website where it doesn&#8217;t really matter if the pages are not built, I don&#8217;t know, three hours, six hours a day, whatever it may be. Do different clients have different expectations there?</p>



<p>[00:34:56] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, that depends on how the publication frequency is. If you want to publish immediately, we can do. If you are okay with publishing the changes after two, three hours, still we can do. So it&#8217;s about how you want to set, how you want to build the things.</p>



<p>So here, few things to consider. You can go with static, fully static website. That&#8217;s just static and only when a page gets updated. So for example, you have a hundred page. All of them are static and those pages will not be regenerated. So if you change just the about page and only that 99 pages will remain the same. Only that about page will get regenerated again. You can go that route.</p>



<p>And also you can go with, every time in the page gets rendered, you can go server side rendering. So every time that&#8217;s new, so you can go that route as well. So that depends on how you want to render the data and everything has pros and cons. The normal way is like how Next.Js does now. Because it is like, keep everything static and if you want to render something, you can still regenerate the specific page.</p>



<p>So this way it&#8217;s like you don&#8217;t have to build everything all the time. So you can build what has changed in the WordPress. You can see that in the headless frontend. And also you don&#8217;t have to wait for it. So, for example, if I go make some change and click update and you can see that immediately.</p>



<p>[00:36:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Really interesting, because there is no exact way of doing this is there? You can just build it in whichever way you think is most beneficial, or whatever the client needs. You know, if, if it&#8217;s a newspaper website where, really I need to click publish, and within a few moments I need that page to be live because the content that we&#8217;re creating is tremendously important to be fresh and new and so on. But it may be that, yeah, you don&#8217;t have that expectation and you&#8217;re quite happy to have it work in a different way and publish on a, a much less frequent basis. I can&#8217;t really imagine a scenario where anybody would say no, I&#8217;d rather it was published less frequently, but maybe there are scenarios where that&#8217;s beneficial. I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>Okay, and the last point that you wanted to talk about was, the whole conversation has proven to be really interesting, but it&#8217;s pretty clear that there&#8217;s a lot more work involved in this kind of website. And so your first point was about the fact that the dependencies, lots of dependencies. Your second point that was that you don&#8217;t always get to see what you see is what you get in operation. And the third one is basically the amount of time it takes, the amount of resources it takes. You&#8217;ve described this as headless asks for more. Tell us about that.</p>



<p>[00:37:34] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Yeah, so when it comes to creating a normal WordPress, like a standard WordPress theme. So what you do is like, you start with your prototyping tool. Like it can be Figma, Adobe XD or anything. So you have your design ready, right? You are creating mock-ups, discuss with the client, and then create a mock-up and then find the variations, all that stuff. And you are settling in, hey, this is my design. And now I&#8217;m going to create the theme.</p>



<p>So, I want to create this many templates. I want to create this many menus, all that stuff. When it comes to traditional stuff, it&#8217;s like, you don&#8217;t have to consider too many things. So it&#8217;s kind of straightforward process and like designers and developers can, the engineers can work hand in hand. And it&#8217;s, you can follow Agile like, build stuff, reiterate and just deliver it.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s how that works. But when it comes to headless, so you have to consider a lot of things. I would say the first thing is the knowledge or, you know, expertise. With WebDev Studios, we are, I would say kind of one of pioneers and also experts in WordPress plus headless stuff. So we have launched, it&#8217;s a open source like we have Next.js starter template. So if you want to try out Next.js a headless frontend for your WebPress site, you can just take a look at WDS Next.js starter. It&#8217;s free and it&#8217;s in GitHub, so you can just start using it.</p>



<p>So, expertise comes one, like whether you should be, have sound knowledge in that. So you can go and fix stuff. You know what you are doing and you know what to expect and all that stuff. But this requires something like, for example, I am a backend engineer. I have limited React knowledge. I&#8217;m now catching up with React, Next.js, all that stuff. But I would, I would not say I&#8217;m an expert at it. I build stuff, I still use Next.js every day, but it&#8217;s like, I won&#8217;t say I&#8217;m an expert at it.</p>



<p>So expertise is one. So your team should have sound knowledge in the framework or anything that you do. Or even if you don&#8217;t have sound knowledge, let&#8217;s say if you are doing something like, something very new, like Remix got released only one or two years ago, right?</p>



<p>So if you want to go use Remix, You should be an expert in React and you should play around with React. So that&#8217;s the time. So my point is like time, it asks for expertise and it asks for time. So when it comes to just normal WordPress theme, probably you might finish the theme, let&#8217;s say, in a few weeks, or at least a few days even sometimes. With page builders finish it in few days or few weeks, right?</p>



<p>But maybe if you are building it from scratch and you are doing a lot of customization, it may take a while. But when it comes to headless, may take even longer. So more expertise, more time, and all this adds up to more budget.</p>



<p>This may sound like, oh, well should I do all this stuff? It&#8217;s kind of worth it. So you don&#8217;t have to, for example, if you have your, the front end components ready you may be having your storybook, like where you want to see how the button should look like, how the elements, how the panels are. Let&#8217;s say how each component will look like and how they render, all that stuff, right? So when you have all these parts ready, you can go from, for example, today I&#8217;m using Next.js, sooner I can move to something else, like I can use Remix. Or I can use something else that&#8217;s going to be hot in the market in future.</p>



<p>But when it comes to the typical WordPress, you are going to change everything from scratch. So if you want to add a new theme, so maybe if you want to change the look and feel, that&#8217;s different. So everything has pros and cons, but the short answer is the headless CMS ask for more.</p>



<p>[00:41:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. It does sound like not only do you need more time to develop all of this for the reasons you&#8217;ve just described. It&#8217;s more complicated, so it takes more time. There&#8217;s more moving parts, shall we say. And it may also be that you need to spend some of that time not just building the thing, but learning how all of this hangs together, because there&#8217;s an awful lot going on in the backend here. And if you don&#8217;t have expertise in that, presumably things could go pretty wrong.</p>



<p>With that just before we end. You&#8217;ve obviously decided at WebDevStudios that this is an approach. I don&#8217;t know if you build the majority of your sites in this way or subset or a proportion of them, not sure. But, typically what is the amount of time longer it would take to get a website out? Let&#8217;s say, for example, that if you were just going to use WordPress as is a normal WordPress website, and you built an exact same website, but did it headless. And let&#8217;s imagine a site with, I don&#8217;t know, several different custom post types.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s got hundreds of pages. I&#8217;m just kind of making up something off the top of my head. But typically, you know, does it take twice as long, three times as long, 50% longer? What, what are we looking at?</p>



<p>[00:42:28] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> I&#8217;m going to answer just like other engineers do. It depends. But it&#8217;s like, I would say it takes a long, maybe you can say, maybe you can say double, but it should not take more than double or something. So that&#8217;s where I would say start with more of research. So you should not change frameworks or libraries in between. Like once you started as React, go with React. And if your team is, they are very comfortable and they&#8217;re knowledgeable in React, use that. If you are going to use Vue.js or Astro or any other framework. When you start with something and you can go with it.</p>



<p>So, it is a matter of discovering what the client needs and where the goals meet. How we can achieve it. And once we are very clear on that, you can start developing. And during the development phase itself, we can see what are the possible, you know, the bottlenecks or what causes the issue, what could be a problem, and we can figure out other different approaches and solutions.</p>



<p>So, for example, you don&#8217;t have to let&#8217;s say, PayPal is not the only payment provider right now, right? The payment gateway. So we are using so many different stuff and they do the payment integration quickly. But before those days, let&#8217;s say 10, 15 years ago that case was different, so now we have more options.</p>



<p>So similarly, you don&#8217;t have to create a form and you don&#8217;t have to wait for someone to, the third party or some other open source in a package or something to be ready. So either you can build something on your own if you have time and budget, or you can fork something and then you can adjust to it.</p>



<p>Or the other way is, I would say you can go with some existing third party or SaaS or any other solution, which is just already there and you can see how you can use it with WordPress. So these are the stuff that can reduce your development time.</p>



<p>So when you say if you are, I don&#8217;t know exact hours or something, let&#8217;s say a thousand hours. So if you say a thousand hours for a normal WebPress installation, so headless may take a little longer, 1,500 or 2000 or anything. But it depends on what the client wants and what framework you choose and your expertise, like, I mean, the whole team&#8217;s expertise. And also how well we plan, organize, and go.</p>



<p>So sometimes it&#8217;s like just the client takes so long to respond, or sometimes it&#8217;s just like, even the client is clueless or what&#8217;s happening. So that adds up to some stuff. And I would like to also highlight, when you hear all this stuff, somebody listening is, they will be scratching their head like, so headless is yay or nay.</p>



<p>So, recently, I cannot say the client name and stuff, but I would say, how we figured this out and how it is kind of helpful. So we had to publish more than 20 websites. That&#8217;s for a single client. And all of them are different, and all of them are headless, but that&#8217;s for a single parent company.</p>



<p>So what happened is, we had the architecture ready, right? So we, we know what happens when you publish. We have everything ready. I mean, the back end and the front end ready. So things become more easier that way. The development time is actually just for one site and then other sites, it&#8217;s just like, it was fast.</p>



<p>But we had enough configuration and enough options we given to the client. So every site is not going to look exactly the same. They have their own customizations. But still it&#8217;s like amount of development time is the same or is actually less when you compare to traditional. But it depends. It depends on what&#8217;s the use case? How, what you are trying to build and everything.</p>



<p>[00:45:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it really does sound, there were so many good perspectives at the beginning where, you mentioned performance and so on where this is definitely going to be worth it. I guess if the client is willing and the budget is available and the expertise is there, then this sounds like an incredible option. Steep learning curve probably, but a lot of benefits on the backside of that.</p>



<p>Lax, just before we round it up, if somebody has been thinking about playing with headless and they&#8217;ve listened to this and they think, okay, I&#8217;d like to take that a bit further. Couple of things, firstly, where can they get in touch with you? But also have you got any guidance about resources that they may find useful?</p>



<p>So that could be a website or a book or whatever it may be. So let&#8217;s start off with resources and then we&#8217;ll turn to you to finish it off. So what resources do you recommend to learn about headless in general?</p>



<p>[00:46:49] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> In general it&#8217;s like you can start with WP Engine has their own blog. They have stuff about headless WordPress and they also have some of packages and stuff they maintain. They have Atlas. It&#8217;s a platform they are planning to go full fledged on headless stuff. And also you can read about GraphQL, WP GraphQL. Their team is more active and they share a ton of stuff on how to customize and maintain stuff with headless.</p>



<p>And also you can, like a shameless plug. So I&#8217;d also highlight about our WebDevStudios blog. So you can see a lot of headless related articles, tips, and tricks. If you want to play around like, you know, you don&#8217;t have to spend something to test it out. So you can go with a lot of free starter templates.</p>



<p>So we have, WDS has like WebDevStudios has a starter template. We have Next.js starter. So that&#8217;s a headless thing. All you need is your WordPress, and then you can install that on a locally in your laptop or machine, and then you can just test it out, how it looks, compare the performance and everything.</p>



<p>And also, like other developers and writers have their own stuff. Like Colby Fayock is a popular WordPress developer. He has his own Next.js starter. So you can just simply Google WordPress headless starter, and you can find a lot of starter templates. If you are a developer, go this route or if you are a, you know, site owner or you are just hobbyist, you want to just try or understand a little bit more?</p>



<p>You can still do that reading the resources, right? You can actually check our blog as well. WebDevStudios blog. We have, I would say a couple of headless related stuff. That&#8217;s one of the popular article last year. Why headless WordPress is trending. So you can see why it is trending, what to expect. You can read more details in that blog.</p>



<p>[00:48:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much. And then finally, just to finish this off. Where could people get in touch with you? Are you available on social media? Maybe an email address? Whatever you&#8217;re comfortable with sharing.</p>



<p>[00:48:50] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Sure. You can find me on, you know, Lax Mariappan. I&#8217;m on all the social media like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and everywhere you can find me. So you can reach out to me as an email as well, laxman.0903@gmail.com. Anywhere like GitHub everywhere is the same. Luckily I got my name on all the social media, so you can find it.</p>



<p>[00:49:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Lax Mariappan, thank you so much for chatting to me today. I really appreciate.</p>



<p>[00:49:16] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Thanks Nathan. It&#8217;s been great. So I&#8217;ve been listening to WP Tavern Podcast for a while. Especially, I like to catch up with what&#8217;s going on. The new stuff with WordPress. So it&#8217;s good to be on the show,</p>



<p>[00:49:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, you are most welcome. It&#8217;s been a really interesting and informative episode. Cheers.</p>



<p>[00:49:34] <strong>Lax Mariappan:</strong> Cheers. Thank you.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today, we have <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/laxmariappan/">Lax Mariappan</a>.</p>



<p>Lax is a web developer based in the Philippines. He’s an Open Source enthusiast, and lover of all things WordPress. Lax has been tinkering with websites since high school, but it all changed when he discovered WordPress in 2010. Lax currently works as a Backend Engineer at <a href="https://webdevstudios.com/">WebDevStudios</a>.</p>



<p>We talk today about Headless WordPress, and it’s a complex topic. Headless is the concept of decoupling the WordPress admin from the frontend of the site. WordPress will continue to work as expected, but the presentation layer will be done by a different technology. React, Gatsby and Remix being some popular choices.</p>



<p>This implementation of WordPress is complex, requiring technical knowledge above and beyond that needed for a more typical WordPress install, but it has its benefits.</p>



<p>Lax talks through all of this in great detail. How keeping on top of all the additional dependencies Headless WordPress requires can be time consuming. How it can create difficulties for content editors who don’t always get to see what their work will actually look like in real time. Why this approach to WordPress can take more time and resources during the build.</p>



<p>Lax explains how these problems typically crop up, and how it’s possible to plan ahead and build in solutions for all the problems that you might encounter.</p>



<p>If you’ve ever thought about going Headless with WordPress, then the podcast today is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://reactjs.org/">React Library</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.com/">Gatsby</a></p>



<p><a href="https://remix.run/">Remix</a></p>



<p><a href="https://webdevstudios.github.io/nextjs-wordpress-starter/">WebDevStudio Next.js WordPress Starter</a></p>



<p><a href="https://graphql.org/">GraphQL</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.wpgraphql.com/">WPGraphQL</a></p>



<p><a href="https://webdevstudios.com/blog/">WebDevStudio Blog</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.colbyfayock.com/">Colby Fayock&#8217;s website</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, 11 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +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: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:71:"Do The Woo Community: 95% of Websites Have an Issue with Color Contrast";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=74180";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:35:"https://dothewoo.io/color-contrast/";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:379:"<p>Even just by getting your color contrast right, which is very easy, anyone can do it. You just use a contrast checker.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/color-contrast/">95% of Websites Have an Issue with Color Contrast</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, 11 Jan 2023 10:43:00 +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: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:86:"WPTavern: WordPress Performance Team Working Towards Unbundling Performance Lab Plugin";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=140668";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:97:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-performance-team-working-towards-unbundling-performance-lab-plugin";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:4476:"<p>WordPress&#8217; Performance Team met this week with the express purpose of responding to Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s recent request to stop adding functionality to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/performance-lab/">Performance Lab</a> plugin which could otherwise work as a standalone plugin.</p>



<p>At the end of December 2022, the Performance Team published instructions for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/20/help-us-test-the-sqlite-implementation/">how to test the new SQLite implementation</a>, which was bundled into the Performance Lab plugin as a module. Mullenweg commented on the post, indicating he saw the SQLite functionality as better suited to becoming a standalone community plugin:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Can we please make this its own community&nbsp;plugin, hopefully to become a canonical one, and stop putting additional things like this into Performance Lab — it feels like we’re stuffing things into PL unnecessarily.</p>



<p>In mid-October I have requested that we stop this unnecessary bundling before with&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/tweetythierry/">@tweetythierry</a>&nbsp;around WebP, which was put into Performance Lab, so it is disappointing that another large function like SQLite was bundled into Performance Lab plugin.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>In an effort to galvanize a base of testers for upcoming performance features, the Performance Team has leaned towards bundling new performance-related functionality into the plugin. Although they are already developed as self-contained modules so they can be easily extracted as individual plugins, the concern is that their visibility would be greatly reduced. The Performance Lab plugin has more than 30,000 active installs. Any standalone plugin would take time to build up to a user base, whereas functionality added to Performance Lab has an instant audience.</p>



<p>&#8220;Agreed that there are definitely valid use cases for stand alone plugins, remaining mindful of some of the advantages of a single hub plugin such as development/maintenance, adoption, promotion, developer onboarding/contribution etc. which the Performance Lab facilitates well today as a central performance focus community hub plugin,&#8221; Performance Team contributor Thierry Muller <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/20/help-us-test-the-sqlite-implementation/#comment-44231">said</a> in response to the unbundling request.</p>



<p>Muller outlined three different options contributors discussed in <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/10/performance-team-meeting-summary-10-january-2023/">this week&#8217;s Performance Team meeting</a>:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<ul>
<li>Option 1: Keep PL as is, but additionally&nbsp;deploy&nbsp;modules as individual plugins</li>



<li>Option 2: Make PL a “wrapper” focused on central infrastructure and recommendation of individual plugins</li>



<li>Option 3: Deprecate PL completely in favor of individual plugins</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>



<p>Option 3 seems to be the least attractive to those who participated in this week&#8217;s discussion, as it introduces more hurdles for discoverability. Performance Team contributor Felix Arntz noted that one benefit of option 1 is the plugin would continue to work as-is for the 30K people who currently have it installed and that option 2 &#8220;would require a complex migration that users likely would not understand.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress developer Jonny Harris suggested that having each functionality in its own plugin helps with testing but also asked what defines a module.</p>



<p>&#8220;Would the current Site Health checks all be together, for example?&#8221; Harris asked. &#8220;SQLite and WebP are clearly their own modules, but what about smaller things?&#8221;</p>



<p>Arntz suggested contributors continue the discussion regarding the scope of how the current modules could be distributed as plugins. He suggested every module could become its own plugin where some modules become standalone plugins and others would be grouped together into a few &#8220;topic specific&#8221; plugins. </p>



<p>Contributors are discussing the different approaches in more detail on a GitHub issue and will be <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/performance/issues/618#issuecomment-1377598692">voting on the best approach</a>. The vote will be open until Friday, January 20, 2023. </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, 11 Jan 2023 03:34:14 +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: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: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:49:"HeroPress: Why small can be just the right choice";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=5014";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:150:"https://heropress.com/essays/why-small-can-be-just-the-right-choice/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-small-can-be-just-the-right-choice";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:7333:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/011023-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: WordPress has impacted where we live, who our friends are and which destinations we like to visit." />Here is Ellen reading her own story aloud.



<p>I feel honoured to write an essay for HeroPress. While thinking about what I should write about, I wanted to make sure it will be helpful to others.</p>



<p>Of course, everyone&#8217;s goals are different. My partner Manuel and I started to create WordPress products, because we saw the opportunity to build a small business and keep it a business we both felt comfortable to work in over the years. And that&#8217;s what we did. We love to travel and searched for a way to live the nomad lifestyle long before the term was even a thing. We travelled and worked on our blog and themes. And don&#8217;t get me wrong, it was not easy in the beginning. We had to build an audience first, so we wrote blog posts about everything we learned while keeping financially afloat with small client projects. We put endless hours of work into our blog, before even dreaming of one day earning income just with our themes. But we loved every minute of it. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>We worked from Thailand, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, and we felt creative and free. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>We went to WordCamps and creative conferences along the way and met so many new people with similar values and goals.</p>



<p>Having these experiences formed our way of thinking about the way we wanted to work moving forward. The benefits of being a small team of two seemed so obvious to us. We could make decisions fast and react to new trends without asking anyone for permission. As long as we built something others liked, we would always be ok. So that&#8217;s what we focused on. We built one theme after the other and loved the creative freedom this work gave us. The positive feedback and listening to the stories our customers shared on how our themes helped them reach their goals kept us going.</p>



<h2 id="h-living-abroad">Living abroad</h2>



<p>As we could work remotely from any location. We didn&#8217;t need an office or a local team. Keeping our business so flexible allowed us to move from Germany to New Zealand in 2015. After about two years working towards it, we were able to apply for a business visa and eventually for permanent residency four years later. Living away from family is never easy, but the opportunity to live in another country surely teaches us so many valuable lessons we would never want to miss. It&#8217;s a true gift, all made possible by our small WordPress business.</p>



<h2 id="h-reacting-to-changes">Reacting to changes</h2>



<p>Fast-forward to 2018 and the WordCamp Tokyo, where we first got the chance to dig deeper into the Gutenberg project during contributor day. We knew changes were coming, and we needed to react with our business. Even before, we felt that building one theme after the other felt a bit tiresome and not like the most effective way for WordPress users to build their site design. We were never convinced by the page builder solutions, as it just seemed too bloated and untrue to WordPress core to bring a wow effect to us. We love to keep things flexible and minimal, and adding an entire framework on top of WordPress never felt like a great idea to us.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>So here comes this Gutenberg thing, a promise to a more flexible, component based way of creating designs for WordPress. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>We felt like this is meant to be for us. So once home from the WordCamp we started to build blocks and explore how this new WordPress would work. We did not realize back then how big these changes would become and how much it would impact our work and our business.</p>



<p>But it felt good to build something new and to try to find a better solution to offer for our theme customers. We struggled to gain footage for quite some time, as there were just so many new technical things to figure out and so much was unclear. But we still never doubted that we are on the right track, as with every new release the opportunities seem to get better and more stable.</p>



<p>And just now we are just about to relaunch our business websites with a brand-new block theme that is solely built with our blocks, WooCommerce blocks and WordPress core blocks. It finally feels like all the work comes together and themes and the Gutenberg project are ready to be merged into one and released for production.</p>



<h2 id="h-opportunity-to-pivot">Opportunity to pivot</h2>



<p>During all these changes, we had the time to think about the future of our WordPress business and what we want our road ahead to look like. Many others around us have sold their independent businesses or took a job at one of the big WordPress businesses. I feel like it&#8217;s also a natural path of WordPress and all of us growing up.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>For us, we feel like we are just getting started again, finally having found a way to have fun creating for WordPress again. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>Building one of our last classic themes, we felt like we had lost the fun in designing for WordPress. We felt like themes were stuck, being either too inflexible and or way too bloated to be any good. It felt like we were trying to build, squeeze out a solution into a product that technically was never meant to be this way.</p>



<p>Block themes, the site editor, patterns, and blocks come as a chance for us to do it better. It&#8217;s a big shift and a difficult project to pull off, for sure. WordPress is used by so many people in so many ways. But block themes make WordPress lighter, and they don&#8217;t stand in the way of other add-ons as much as classic themes felt they were. It&#8217;s amazing how we can take all the components apart and mix and match them together. There are still missing pieces, but we are getting there.</p>



<p>For us, we are taking this shift that we are sort of making together with WordPress, as an opportunity to make things better. We always felt like we wanted to offer more support and help to our customers. But we never found the time. So with our upcoming relaunch, we are taking the chance to change that. We will offer new services and are exploring more ways to offer our customers what they actually need. It feels like a breath of fresh air to us, and we haven’t had so much fun with WordPress in a long time.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>It&#8217;s funny, who would have thought that a piece of software can impact your life in such a big way. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>WordPress has impacted where we live, who our friends are and which destinations we like to visit. We feel more open-minded because of WordPress, we believe in the power of open source projects and we believe that a group of people from all over the world can build something meaningful together.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://heropress.com/essays/why-small-can-be-just-the-right-choice/">Why small can be just the right choice</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, 11 Jan 2023 01:15:32 +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:11:"Ellen Bauer";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:63:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress is Turning 20: Let’s Celebrate!";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=14155";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:74:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/01/wordpress-is-turning-20-lets-celebrate/";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:1474:"<p>2023 marks the 20th year of WordPress. Where would we all be without WordPress? Just think of that! While many technologies, software stacks, and fashion trends have come and gone throughout the past two decades, WordPress has thrived. This is due to the fantastic work and contributions of the WordPress community, comprised of thousands of contributors; and millions of users who have embraced the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/">four freedoms of WordPress</a> and the mission to democratize publishing.</p>



<p>Let’s celebrate!</p>



<p>Throughout the beginning of 2023, leading up to the official anniversary date of WordPress’s launch (May 27, 2003), a number of different events will celebrate this important milestone, reflect on the journey, and look toward the future.</p>



<p>Please join in!</p>



<p>Over the next few months, be sure to check WordPress’s official social media accounts along with the <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/">official anniversary website</a> for updates on how you can be involved in this exciting celebration by contributing content, collecting cool anniversary swag, and much more. </p>



<p>Use the hashtag <strong>#WP20</strong> on social media so the community can follow along.</p>



<p>If you have something planned to celebrate that you would like to be considered for inclusion on the official website, please <a href="https://forms.gle/my1yknAJYZ4jFLb79">use this form to share the details</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, 10 Jan 2023 21:38:49 +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:11:"Dan Soschin";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, 27 Jan 2023 14:10:30 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Fri, 27 Jan 2023 13:45:33 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20211220193300";}