WordPress Unplugged with Jamie Marsland and Kevin Geary

*clicks* *clicks* And we’re on.

Hi Kevin.

Hey, how are you Jamie?

Well, I’m good.

Thanks.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to the first ever inaugural episode of WordPress Unplugged with me, Jamie Marsland and…

Kevin Geary.

Rock and roll.

Thanks everyone.

So this is going to be a 45 minute short and sharp episode.

We are also planning, scheming to try and run a live podcast from WordCamp US in Portland.

So keep an eye out for that one.

We’re still working out the logistics, but it should be a fun one.

I’ve never been to Portland, Kevin.

What should I expect there?

Portland is good food and outdoor adventures.

So if you like hiking, if you like scenery, if you like that good thing, you know, it’s a great city for that.

There’s some golf, I think, right?

Happening?

Absolutely.

Yes.

Some golf.

I’m not good at it, but I will be, I will be doing it.

I will be participating.

Do you have a handicap?

Is that, is that a thing that you have?

I’m not there yet.

No, we don’t.

We’re not even at that level.

Yeah.

We are on the, you play golf a couple of times a year, you know, a few times a year, if you’re lucky, that’s, that’s where we’re at.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the format for today’s episode, we’re going to keep this pretty short and sharp.

We want to talk about two things.

Primarily we want to talk about edge.

Cause I had some rumors.

There was this thing called edge happening last week.

I was on a live stream.

It was incredible.

So we want to get into some of that.

And we also want to talk about my new role.

I want to talk about my new role as running the wordpress.org YouTube channel.

So those are the two.

We’re going to limit it, limit the scope of today’s episode to those two things.

If you have ideas for future episodes, let us know, because obviously this is going to be an ongoing thing.

And if you have any questions about those two things today, pop it in the chat.

We are going to be limited for time because we’ve, we’ve both got hard stops on today, but we’re going to answer a few questions at the end.

But should we start with edge, Kevin?

Let’s start with edge.

Let’s start with edge.

All right.

Well, first of all, I just wanted to get your, like, what, what did you, obviously people had to go to the live stream without really knowing a lot of details.

So in your mind heading into the live stream, what were you predicting?

What did you think?

So it was going to be, yeah, well, I, I thought, I thought, I, well, firstly, I didn’t, I didn’t get it right.

I didn’t, I didn’t pick what you were going to be doing in a lot of ways, which we’ll probably dive into.

I suspected it was some kind of SaaS thing, if I’m honest.

I wasn’t quite sure what some kind of SaaS thing.

So I was wrong about what it was.

I thought it was what it turned out to be was probably far more interesting than I was expecting in lots of ways.

So yeah, it was, I definitely, I didn’t pick it till you got me.

Okay.

All right.

And then, you know, I, I went through in the early part of the presentation, the four eras of word.

Well, we’re going into era four, I say.

Yeah.

But the first three eras of WordPress, did that stack up with how you, what you understand WordPress to have gone through in terms of some stages?

Well, the first thing to say is that Brits struggle with how Americans say era.

Okay.

Yeah.

And we struggled a lot with, with the Taylor Swift tour.

Yeah.

Which, which my daughters went to.

So, you know, for us an era, you say error.

Mm-hmm.

And that’s like a mistake for us.

Mm-hmm.

So, I just, yeah, cause we, yeah, we do the, it’s a, it would be the hard R on, it would be error, like error.

If you’re making an error, a mistake.

Yeah.

I mean, throughout this podcast series, I’m going to teach you some.

Yeah.

We’ll get this down.

Um, You say era, era, era, era, era.

And yeah.

Um, so how would you say era?

Like you mean like.

Yeah.

The error, like you have to put that, you have to get that R on the end.

Anyway, we digress a bit.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was a good summation.

I think, I thought it was a really good, interesting way of presenting it.

I mean, the first thing to say, I thought it was an incredible piece of theater.

Wow.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

I thought it was like, and I was watching the live chat.

I’ve never seen a live chat go so crazy.

The live chat was, you know, it was crazy.

It was crazy.

Yeah.

So as a piece of, as a piece of watching from afar, as a piece of, uh, product marketing in alignment with what, what you’re selling, I thought it was a really interesting pitch, especially as you don’t have a, you know, you’re not selling, there’s no thing yet.

Right.

You’re selling an idea.

Um, but yeah, I think broadly I’m in agreement with the four, with the four errors, um, of what you outlined.

I’d have some, I’d have some, I think I’d have some questions around what, you know, the, the, the view on the beginner market and how that helped grow WordPress and that stuff.

Yeah.

You want to get in?

Yeah.

Broadly, broadly, I think that was, it was a good, accurate description of where, where we’ve been.

Okay.

Do you want to get into the beginner market thing or do you want to just stick with that?

Yeah.

Um, yeah, no, we’ll, we’ll get a bit.

I mean, I think from my point of view though, um, I think the beginner market was a huge driver and still is a huge driver for the, for the growth of WordPress.

Uh, and I think it’s, in fact, I was only talking to my wife about this today.

Um, I think it’s a, it’s still a huge opportunity for WordPress in terms of, and we’ll come onto this when we talk about the YouTube channel and some of the content I want to start creating for that channel.

Yeah.

Um, I think that’s a huge market.

Um, and I know you’ve got really strong views about who shouldn’t, who, who shouldn’t build websites.

Um, so I think that was, that was quite an interesting kind of departure from what I think, you know, WordPress is aimed at or part of the market that WordPress is aimed at.

Right.

Yeah.

Uh, I mean, I was going to ask you about that, like in terms of, so etch, etch is aimed at, uh, what I, what I would call a, maybe a disaffected group of WordPress users, agency owners and freelancers who they feel the pure block editor is not really the greatest workflow for them.

Uh, they’re also not, you know, super excited about the existing page builder tools.

Um, so for, in, in terms of etch, obviously it’s designed for, you know, the, uh, super excited about the existing page builder tools.

Um, so for, in, in terms of etch, obviously it’s designed for, you know, the, uh, it’s designed for them, but do you see them as, do you agree that they are perhaps a, a disaffected group?

Do you, uh, do you have a lot of conversations with people in that group and hear from them?

Yeah.

I, I, I, a hundred percent agree with that comment.

I’d see them and I hear them and I feel their pain.

And then you’ve got people on, you’ve got people on all sides of the spectrum.

So you’ve got Brian chords, who’s a Gutenberg fan, but he’s still, he still sees some space where it needs to improve.

And at the end of the scale, you’ve got your other folks.

Um, and I think WordPress is kind of like always, or I think what’s really, what re what is really interesting about etch.

And what I really liked about etch is the fact that actually it’s acknowledging that, but it’s also acknowledging the need to build on top of core, which was like, you know, WordPress has always encouraged people to build on top of core for specific audiences.

I think that’s one of the amazing things about it, that you can do that with it.

Right.

Um, and I think that’s, I don’t, I don’t see, I know you see a huge friction in that, but I don’t see, and I know you see huge frustration in that, but, um, and debt core could definitely, you know, it’s going to need to make strides to, to bridge that gap.

But I still think there was a room in the market for something like etch to build on top of it.

That is going to service a really, I think that’s one of the things that really appeals to me is is servicing a really discreet market that you can really focus in on and tailor that experience exactly for them.

And I think that’s, you know, I don’t think that’s a weakness of WordPress.

I think that’s a huge strength.

And part of my, um, kind of thought around it is that WordPress is now a modern development environment.

So if you do want to do that, it’s actually from an application layer point of view, it’s, you can do that in terms of what you’re going to be building.

So yeah, I don’t see such a friction in that.

Yeah.

For those, you know, who aren’t, uh, who didn’t go to the live streams, they may not know.

So etch, one of the key features of etch is what we call automatic block authoring.

And so everything that you’re building in etch is essentially being assembled as blocks using core blocks for you so that all of your data is existing in the block editor.

It’s not locked inside of etch.

And so it’s not locked inside of etch.

Like it would be in a normal page builder environment.

So, um, it, it bridges the gap.

It allows your clients or, um, any, any lay person coming in to edit the site to actually use the block editor for content editing and layout, simple layout editing and things like that.

Um, and it, and it completely liberates your data.

So it checks a lot of boxes doing it that way.

And I guess what I would say is, um, was that one of the more surprising features, uh, when you were learning about etch and is that, would you consider that to be the most exciting feature of etch or did you like something else that you heard?

Yeah, no, that’s, that was the most surprising thing.

And, um, I was gonna, yeah, it was definitely the most, the most interesting thing.

Um, for me and it was actually something Matt Mullenweg mentioned, I think it was in Torino about how he likes the page builders building on top of core.

And actually it, it, it fits that it was going to be.

And the one of the big question going around my head was kind of, I love the idea, but I was kind of like, I wonder who in your team, whether it was you, that’s such a crucial decision in terms of X, I was wondering why that happened and where that happened.

Yeah.

Um, so we’ve had tons and tons of discussions and debates, uh, leading up to what etch ultimately would be.

And, um, you know, we’re always looking for unique angles on things.

We’re always looking for how we can just reassess the problems that we’re trying to solve, you know, take a step back and like, okay, here’s how other people have tried to solve the problem, but it, you know, that might not be the best way.

Are there other avenues we should explore?

It was actually Matteo who came up with the idea of, uh, you know, we had talked about the block it like for people who don’t know, etch actually started as an idea for a pure FSC block theme.

Like that was the very, very original because we wanted to get into that side of WordPress.

Yeah.

Then we ran into a bunch of limitations for what we wanted to do and what we wanted the workflow to look like and on and on and on.

And so we kind of slowly abandoned the pure FSC theme, but we still wanted to be somehow involved with the block side of WordPress.

And it was Matteo who actually came in.

He saw a comment that Matt had left on.

I wish I had the screenshot of it, but, uh, in just a random kind of discussion board thing.

And Matt made a little comment about this kind of thing.

And then, um, you know, it just triggered in Matteo’s mind.

He was like, I mean, maybe we should look into this.

It could be very easy to do or possible at least to, uh, write to blocks automatically.

And at the time we were thinking maybe that would be proprietary blocks.

And we, you know, I came in, I was like, I, I really would love to avoid proprietary blocks at all costs.

Uh, and I actually don’t think proprietary blocks would be needed at all.

I think we could use completely core blocks to do this.

We started doing proofs of concept and more testing, and then it kind of unlocked like, yeah, we’re, we’re pretty sure this can just be done with core blocks.

There would not be a proprietary block needed other than maybe a loop block.

Uh, but I don’t, I’m not even convinced that a proprietary loop block is necessary.

So we’re going to keep going down that path.

But Matteo is really the one who, who steered it, uh, that automatic block authoring concept.

And do you know, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that was, that was surprising to me in a good way.

Um, and what’s the kind of real driver behind that apart from it being a good thing to do in terms of users, cause no other page builders, hold on.

I’m going to get this right.

No, the page builders have that approach yet.

Correct.

Uh, and it checks a lot of boxes.

Um, so we knew that client editing safe, easy client editing was a really, really important pain point for a lot of page builder users.

They don’t want, you know, everybody describes maybe bricks or oxygen as kind of like a seven 47 cockpit kind of situation.

And they’re like, my, my clients can’t come into this.

They can’t, they have no idea what’s going on.

Um, and I’ve always said, you know, as much as I dislike the block editor for page building for website, like actual design and assembly, I think it’s a really, really great and capable content editor.

And so that automatic block authoring just unlocked the door to like, Hey, that’s, that can act.

That’s the client editing interface right there.

Like it’s exactly what it was designed to be nice and simple and clean and easy.

Um, and so that it, it checks that box and the big box that it checks, the huge box that it checks is the data liberation box.

Uh, because if I go build a page in bricks, all that data is stuck in bricks.

Um, if I go build it in etch, that data is liberated out of etch into the block editor, it’s core WordPress.

And then of course we’re rendering the site with the block editors rendering engine, not with a proprietary rendering engine, uh, like other page builders do.

So there’s a lot of advantages to, to that format.

Yeah.

Cool.

So, um, now I guess the other thing would be, you know, some controversies around etch.

Uh, were you, how, how did you feel going through the, the entire presentation and kind of arriving at the end?

Um, we talked about getting in, um, you know, there’s a lot of pushback and I’ve wanted to explain this a few different times now, cause I’ve seen it come up over and over and over again.

Um, but what was your general feeling and general takeaway of there not being any Figma files or demo or MVP or MVP or anything else available as part of the process?

Yeah.

I mean, I was a bit, I was kind of, I was kind of surprised.

Yeah.

I was expecting some kind of screenshots or it’s interesting.

I was kind of expecting the key bit, cause the B the key challenge for me is the bit where you’re gonna, uh, is this, is this chatting between etch and Gutenberg and that, that bit is really interesting technically.

So I was kind of, yeah, I was hoping, I was hoping to see some of the, that stuff in action.

Um, and you know, reading some of the comments on, is it, you know, some of the, some of the feedback has been people would have liked to have seen that, but it doesn’t seem to have hindered people buying into the vision, which is quite interesting in itself.

Um, and also I guess some of the feedback I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m in the Bricks group a bit.

And some of the feedback there has been like, I guess that’s some of the bumpy stuff that you wouldn’t expect if you were going to build your own thing.

I’ve seen some of that happening in the, in the Bricks group.

Um, so yeah, I was expecting to see, I don’t know what, I mean, I got it wrong to start with.

So I don’t know what I was expecting to say.

I didn’t know what it was going to be, but I was expecting to see some kind of more polished finished product, I guess.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, it’s, uh, we, we discussed it as a team.

Obviously we could have, we could have shown things.

Um, you know, what, what I ultimately decided, first of all, and you know, what I would have shown is the proofs of concept.

Um, which there’s, there’s going to be a lot of people.

There’s really two sides to this, three sides to this.

There, there would be a group that would fully understand what they’re looking at.

Oh, I understand what a proof of concept is.

I understand that this is all functionality.

I understand that no thought time effort, et cetera, has been put into UI UX.

Like I know exactly what I’m looking at.

That’s one group.

Then there would be group two who’d be like, I’ve never seen a proof of concept in my life.

What am I looking at?

This looks like absolute trash.

I don’t want anything to do with this, right?

Like instantly they would write it off.

They just, their brain doesn’t understand what a, what a proof of concept is or how software is developed or how we get to this stage.

Uh, and then there would be the third group, which is, um, you know, we would call them, I guess the trolls group who, um, you know, they would take what’s presented as a proof of concept and then go, uh, create a, essentially a bunch of negative press about like, look at what their, this is, you know, and they, they, it would just create a big negative experience.

Right.

Uh, and then this, the, one of the main points that I made in the presentation is we build software with early adopters, not like for people.

It’s not our team doesn’t go into a dark room with all of our opinions and put everything together and then just come show everybody.

What we’ve done with every single product is we build it with the early adopters.

And so with that being the principle, the principle can’t be, we build software with early adopters and then, but look at all these decisions that we made without you.

And like, here’s, here’s the demos of all the decisions that we made without any of your input and all based on our, uh, you know, theories and assumptions and, and all of that.

Have you seen, um, have you seen a lot of pushback because of the kind of.

Basing it on Gutenberg and core.

Have you had, have you had some of that stuff?

I thought maybe, maybe we might have to deal with some of that.

No, there hasn’t been any.

I mean, there’s, there’s been people who are like, why don’t we just forget the block thing?

Why, why do the block?

And I, and I think once they understand it’s, it’s not just to appease something.

It’s not just to check up.

It has legitimate benefits, like major, major legitimate benefits.

If even if you don’t want the client editing side of things, the, just the data liberation box alone, checking that box alone is major.

Yeah.

Cool.

So in terms of your, uh, happiness of how it’s gone, you must be, I mean, the sales have been pretty good.

So you must be.

Yeah.

I mean, we, we, uh, yeah, we hit our, we hit, you know, we had three different goals in place.

We had a, you know, a minimum goal.

It’s like, Hey, we’re, you know, we have to do this to green light the project.

We had a main goal and then we had our stretch goal and we easily hit the stretch goal, uh, and shut it down.

So, you know, we have everything we need.

We’re, we’re moving forward and we’re super excited about it.

The early adopters are super excited about it.

And, uh, we’re going to build something pretty, pretty special.

Cool.

And part of this podcast, we’re going to track the journey of this.

So, um, that’ll be, I mean, you’re building in public.

Yeah.

It’s going to be, there’s going to be some dark days and some good days.

So we will, we’ll, we’ll cover all that stuff.

That’ll be fun to see, which moves us onto my new role as head of YouTube.

Cause we’ve 20 minutes in.

Yeah.

You, you, you heard the news and what do you think?

I think, I think it’s fantastic.

I mean, I think WordPress, um, there needs to be more or, and they’re already doing it behind the scenes.

Probably people don’t know as much, but there needs to be, I think more organization and camaraderie.

Um, I guess just unity among the content creators that are part of WordPress.

And I don’t know what you would call us, you know, influence or whatever.

Uh, but people that are dedicated to creating content and educating on WordPress.

I, I think that, um, and I’ve proven this with oxygen.

I’ve proven it with bricks, every platform that I’ve been a part of a WS form and, uh, education drives people to adopt.

And if we want more people to adopt WordPress, we have to do more education around it.

It’s education that helps them use it, but it’s also education that helps them just see potential before they even become a user.

Uh, and if there’s more great content, then everybody is going to, uh, benefit from that.

Right.

You’re ready for a quiz.

I’m ready for a quiz.

Here we go.

So this is, uh, a new item on the podcast called quiz Kevin.

Uh, so I’m going to give you some, I want some stats for what you think YouTube viewership is for these different web builders.

All right.

Okay.

Ready for this.

So we’ll start with WordPress.org.

Uh, number of subs at the moment.

WordPress.org.

Yeah.

This is the channel I’m now taking over.

Well, I haven’t started yet.

I should say, I mean, as part of when you join automatic, you do like a two week onboarding and part of that is two weeks support.

So I’m currently in the support forums helping out.

So, but from October.

Yeah.

How many subscribers?

I like that format by the way.

Uh, WordPress.org YouTube subscribers.

I couldn’t even begin to guess 20,000, 36,000.

How many, how many, uh, this can go on a while.

How many, I love, I love, I love stats.

How many subscribers a month are they putting on?

Uh, okay.

So they’ve got 36,000 subscribers.

I’m going to go with, uh, 1400.

That’s pretty close.

1100.

Uh, feel free to play along in the chat by the way.

Um, and how many views a month are they getting?

Hmm.

I don’t even look at my own stats.

Uh, 60,000.

Uh, what was I saying?

No, no, no, 91,000, which is pretty good.

And they’ve grown a lot actually over the, over the past.

It’s had a, it’s had a real focus and the team that’s running it.

But, uh, that’s where they’re at.

Right.

Let’s, should we do web flow and we’ll do a few others quickly.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

We’re for how many subscribers, man.

Don’t even know.

Uh, 60,000.

No, 200,000.

Uh, let’s take out the most interesting ones here.

Yeah.

Uh, how many views per month?

This is quite interesting.

Hmm.

Views per month.

Uh, they’re over a million.

Yeah.

No, 365,000.

Right.

Let’s do Wix.

Wix.

How many subscribers?

Uh, Wix.

I would say Wix is bigger than web flow.

Well, I don’t know about the creator side of Wix though.

Hmm.

What was web flow again?

You said 200,000.

Yeah.

Let’s go. 350 for Wix.

Which is 197,000, but this, this, this stat will blow your mind.

And I think, yeah, how many views are they getting a month?

Um, big Kevin.

More, more, more, 600, uh, 35, 33 million.

Uh, 35, 33 million.

Okay.

A month.

Yeah.

That’s the ads.

That’s the, that’s the ad money.

Jamie.

That’s the ad money.

That number’s big, right?

Yeah.

That’s the build a website in five minutes with AI ad money right there.

Yeah.

Well, we’ll talk about Wix in a future episode.

Probably.

Um, I was talking to my wife about Wix today.

Um, right.

We’ll just do a couple more Shopify.

How many subs?

Hmm.

500,000.

Yeah.

Pretty good.

400,000.

Yeah.

Pretty good.

440,000.

Let’s finish off with Canva.

How many subs, how many subs of Canva got?

I’ve paid very little attention to Canva.

Uh, I would imagine a lot more though.

I don’t know.

Yeah.

750.

Uh, 7 million.

Whew.

Okay.

Doing well.

They’re doing well on the YouTubes.

Yeah.

I looked up the other day.

I looked on ah, the other day.

I think they’re getting 200 million note, like 225 million unique subscribers a day or something like that at the moment.

It’s absolutely.

Yeah.

So I just want to go on.

What are you gonna say?

I was just gonna say, I don’t, I, you know, I don’t like know that I even know any, any Canva creators like, but I imagine that there would be a ton of them.

Right.

I just haven’t paid attention to them, I guess.

Yeah.

Well, Canva would be right in your wheelhouse if not, you know, kind of is aimed at, it’s aimed at lots of people now, but it seemed at, I, I, I saw this great thing with Melanie Perkins.

My name is, it was the CEO talking about when she’s trying to raise funding for it.

And everyone was saying, why do, why would beginners ever wanna, ever wanna be designers?

Which I, and I thought of you when I, I thought of you when I saw that.

But that’s, but, but that’s really can, that’s canvas target market.

Right.

Yeah.

It’s, it’s just like, make it as easy as possible drag stuff around, drop it around.

And yeah.

It’s kind of proved that there’s a market, right?

I mean, there’s a legitimate use for like, I mean, if you’re, let’s say I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna create social media graphics or something like just quick and easy social media.

Like, you know, I don’t have to be a top designer with a top design.

So I’m just trying to create like a social media graphic, like put it on that.

Like canvas kind of a good use for that.

Right.

Yeah.

It depends on really what you’re trying to do and what the consequences are of, of doing it.

Well, my wife’s a yoga, he’s got, runs a yoga studio and she’s, she’s right in that sort of, she uses Canva for a lot of her social media stuff.

Cause it’s so easy.

Yeah.

Um, anyway, I, and I think there’s a real market for an edge for an edge type technical solution, purely aimed at beginners in the WordPress space.

But anyway, that’s for a different day.

Can I just talk to you?

I’ve got some questions around my strategy for YouTube.

And if anyone wants to chime in the chat as well, that’d be great.

So I’m, I’m, I’ve broken kind of the content plan down into aiming at certain people.

Yep.

So I just want to run you through these, get your feedback.

So beginners.

Beginners.

What do you want me to, what do you want feedback you’re wanting?

A yes or no?

I want no feedback.

I’m just looking at your face.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, I already knew that.

I just wanted to say that.

You didn’t have to listen to that one.

That one was the obvious one.

Yeah.

So beginners DIY is.

Mm-hmm.

So I saw this tweet from, um, Katie from Bantu today, actually, and she was saying how anecdotally she thinks that probably 50% of their customers are store owners and 50% are agencies and freelancers.

And just to classify, you’re saying a beginner is somebody who wants to get into web design, but it’s at the beginning stages.

Well, maybe, but they might be working.

They might be pre they need a website.

So I’m not talking necessarily.

No, I’m not talking about somebody that wants to get into web design at this point.

I’m going to come on to them.

So what’s the difference then between a beginner and a DIY?

DIY is kind of further along.

They might be that person that’s already up and running and they’ve got a website and they just want to know how to, they’re kind of the next stage.

Okay.

But let me know if you don’t think this makes sense.

Designers.

Okay.

Yeah.

Pure graphic designers trying to come over to web.

Yeah.

I think, well, I think there’s a huge, and I put this tweet out about this.

That doesn’t, there’s loads of communities for page building and dev and all the kind of tool stuff around WordPress, but there doesn’t seem to be any real content around, you know, the real art of design that I, and content creators aren’t really producing that kind of content.

You know, talking about the rule of thirds or all that kind of stuff.

I, it feels like a cap to me.

That’s, that’s, that is the, that is the group that fueled web flow.

That’s the group that fuels Figma.

Okay.

And all of these tools for sure.

Like they, web flow went hard in the paint on go attract.

Cause they were like, Hey, if people have solid design talent, which isn’t easy to come by, uh, we want to teach them how to build websites with web flow.

And if we bring these people with really good design talent over and teach them how to build websites with web flow, we’re going to go that, that goes gangbusters.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Yeah.

That’s interesting.

Where do those people hang out online?

Uh, I mean, in design communities, right?

For sure.

Uh, there’s a gazillion Figma design groups.

Um, yeah.

I mean all over the place, but they do tend to hang out together.

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I think there’s a big, there’s clearly a big gap in the WordPress content, especially on the dot org channel.

Uh, right.

Agencies and freelancers.

Yeah.

A hundred percent for sure.

And if you were like, if you also create tons of content for them, but if you were like tasked with creating content around corks, this needs to be around core.

Yeah.

Where would you go with that?

I said, Kevin, your content lead for the agencies and freelancers on the dot org channel.

Where’d you go?

Yeah.

I mean, I would have to create, I would have to create content around etch because, uh, you can’t do that.

That’s what that, no, that’s what I’ve said is like the, uh, that’s the tough.

The, uh, that’s the tough part is for agencies and freelancers, you know, they can, they can use core blocks.

Um, they can, but if they’re going to use core blocks, they’re going to get, they’re going to get stuck with limitations, which then is going to lead them into custom blocks, block extensions, all of that stuff.

Um, or maybe they’re using, maybe something could be considered a pro block theme or something, or maybe you, you would see, you would have to bring a third party tool in unless you’re going to teach them how to do the custom blocks and the block extensions and all of that.

Yeah.

You’re going to have to bring them into a third party tool, either a block theme or a block system.

Okay.

You’ve circumvented my question.

You can’t do that.

Cause I’m running the thing and I’d sack you if you did that.

So I’m going to ask you again, what’d you do?

Yeah.

If you can’t bring in a third party tool, where do you go with it?

I feel, I feel, I feel stuck if I can, if I, in the current, in the current paradigm we live in, I feel stuck if we can’t bring in a third party tool.

All right.

I guess I can let you offer that.

This is a really, the next one’s really interesting.

Cause if you, and this is product suppliers, so this is where itch might come in, right?

Mm-hmm.

This is your, this is your opportunity.

Like developers.

Well, no, I’m talking about the, like, we’ve got, if you go to wordpress.org, there’s 60,000 plugins on.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you go to the wordpress.org channel, there’s no mention of third party plugins.

So the problem with it from a channel point of view is if, if I featured a plugin on the.org channel.

Yep.

Everyone would go crazy because I’m featuring somebody’s plugin.

So what do you think about that?

What do we do about that?

Yeah.

You’re going to have to tread lightly, uh, in, in, in that regard.

I mean, here’s the thing.

First of all, uh, even, even if you did.

Uh, even, even if you did it completely honestly, and if you did it as, as fair as you possibly can, uh, there will always be people who complain.

They’re always, so you, maybe you have to just decide, okay, that’s going to be acceptable.

Um, or you just say, we know we can’t please everybody.

And that there’s maybe some semblance of, if there’s any semblance of unfairness or, uh, anything like that, it would be a poor reflection.

So maybe we’re just not even going to go into that territory.

That would be something I would need to sit around and ponder further.

Yeah.

It’s, it’s problematic.

Cause it’s kind of one of the best things about WordPress, but we can’t talk about it.

Right.

It’s also, but it needs to be talked about because it’s also one of the harder part for somebody coming into WordPress, navigating that ecosystem is one of the harder, uh, things about WordPress.

And the thing that feels most chaotic to them, I think.

Yeah.

And so if there’s no guidance around that, or even just no talk of it, it’s like, Hey, we just, we don’t really talk about that side of things, you know, uh, that doesn’t really help them at all.

So I definitely think something, some sort of plan needs to be put together in that regard.

Yeah.

Well, if you’ve got any ideas, anyone out there, cause I definitely want to do it.

I want to feature it.

I’ve got some, I’ve had some early ideas about formats that would kind of fit that, but not annoy everyone.

Um, I’ve got some other ideas as well.

And then the final, the final one is, is kind of very important, but it’s hard to think about making it compelling to outside people.

And that’s the community.

That’s the core community of WordPress, which a lot of content is focused on, which is kind of the internal stuff.

Yeah.

Which needs to be shown, but how do you, how do you take that content and make it kind of compelling to people that aren’t in the community?

creative challenge.

That’s yeah.

No, that’s something else that would need, uh, some further thought.

I mean, is this all just you doing the content?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is what else is involved.

So, so yeah, my plan here, I should have said that this is not me doing all the content.

So I want to have content leads for each of these areas.

This is, this is early thoughts as well.

Right.

Yeah.

I’m only like a week and a half into it and I haven’t even started properly yet.

Um, I want to have content leads for each of the areas and we’ve already got some amazing content. content people like Nick Diego and Justin Tadlock are already creating, creating amazing content for this stuff, which table.

Um, and I also want to, um, definitely have, you know, other, other content creators on there as well.

People who are already creating professional content to find a way to amplify this stuff they’re doing.

So no, this definitely will not just be me.

I’m going to be one of the faces, but definitely not all of them.

Yeah.

I was going to say with the going after design, the design group, for example, you know, you’re going to have to be very careful in who you choose for that because, you know, designers are very particular people, you know?

Uh, and so if they don’t feel like that content is legit or like high enough level in terms of design, it’s just going to completely turn them off.

Right.

Um, and now that you say you’re bringing other creators, uh, yeah, I think Brian cords, like for example, would be if you’re going to go after the pro freelance side of core blocks.

I mean, that’s an obvious to me, that’s an obvious pick, you know?

Um, so yeah, I’m, I’m excited to hear about that.

The one idea that I had that I do think that you should probably consider, uh, is some sort of storytelling component to content, uh, where you’re bringing in, bring in DIY wires, bring in people who are success stories in WordPress, who.

Uh, they DIY their own, you know, WooCommerce website.

And now they’re doing, you know, seven figures in sales with this product that they, you know, any story that is a success story that can be told.

And you can bring that person on.

Yeah.

I think that that would be a fantastic series.

Also.

I think that’s a great point.

And part of my, um, well, the, the main part of my kind of idea behind the channel is that every piece of video needs to play into the story of WordPress, whatever that.

Yeah.

And I, I see the story of WordPress at the moment of huge growth and then kind of your four areas actually kind of, and then a bit of a dip and now it’s kind of rebuilding and rebook the kind of rebirth of it.

And I think every piece of video needs to fit in that overall narrative of, um, where WordPress is.

I was talking to my wife today about what she thought of, uh, the WordPress brand and she didn’t necessarily have a clear idea on what it was, which was like, well, that’s quite interesting that you don’t.

When I say that I actually asked her what, if it was a shop, what shop would it be?

And she said it was kind of like an electrical shop, which manned by men that particularly don’t smell, don’t wash very often.

This is actually what she said.

I’m not sure she was referring to me.

Yeah.

Hopefully not.

Uh, no, I, I think that, um, you’re not going to get, you know, a consistent answer from people who work in WordPress.

You’re not going to get a consistent answer from people outside of WordPress.

And I think if we can find a way to steer the narrative towards a consistent answer that everybody feels fits, that’s going to be a big benefit to, to WordPress.

Like I’ve said, I, you know, I feel like WordPress has a little bit of an identity, uh, crisis, right?

It’s like, it really needs to figure out what it is, what it’s trying to be and who it’s really, I understand the let’s serve everybody thing.

Um, but that’s hard to communicate sometimes.

And, uh, and then we also have twosides of it.com.org.

That’s another thing that in my personal experience needs a lot of clarity because people just do not, especially people on the outside do not understand what’s going on with, with that divide.

Yeah.

There’s some definite, definite challenges in terms of the content planning, but the key bit is just create some amazing content, right?

That’s going to draw people into the project.

That’s putting somebody on it like you that’s, that’s dedicated to doing it and then getting creators on calls and having these discussions.

And this is all, this is all moving WordPress in the right direction.

Absolutely.

I mean, honestly, I’m completely obsessed.

This is literally all I think about, uh, and have done for about a year in terms of this stuff.

So it’s, um, it feels like the perfect, it feels like the perfect job for me at the moment.

So if anyone has any, you know, wants to get involved, has ideas, um, is creating interesting content, has format ideas.

Let me know.

That’d be, that’d be awesome.

And we’re going to track the progress of this one as well.

I’ll report back and give you updates of how we’re going and we’ll highlight some of the cool stuff going on and amplify people that are creating cool content as well.

That’s part of the plan.

Fantastic.

All right.

I think that’s covered YouTube for now, but, um, anything else to add, which would you take some questions?

Is anyone?

Yeah, let’s, let’s, uh, let’s get 10 minutes of questions in guys.

If you’ve got questions, if you could put hashtag Q, I think that’s the convention, right?

Kevin.

Mm-hmm.

I think you, yeah, I think we can search on here.

And by the way, once we’ve sorted out the technology, which is on you, Kevin, right?

This is going to be a published tool in normal podcast channels.

Yeah.

You’ll be able to subscribe in any favorite podcast, uh, app that you use and fully distribute distributed.

Yeah.

You want to pick them or you want me to pick them?

I can’t see any.

So yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Let’s see.

I’ll try to avoid the ones that are just like on edge.

Yeah.

Um, okay.

Let’s see.

Why not release them inside?

Okay.

If a designer, for example, this needs design tools.

Okay.

Maybe we’ll elevate this one from Toby.

If a designer, for example, who needs just design tools, sees things meant for developers.

Won’t that make the interface, uh, interface exceptionally overwhelming.

I’m not, can you clarify that one for me?

I think that, um, well, I think, I think web flow has kind of proven that this is not the case.

Um, in my personal experience, bringing designers into WordPress, it’s not the case.

Uh, but you know, web flow said, Hey, we’re going to go out and get a bunch of talented designers and we’re going to bring them into web flow.

And web flow is not a streamlined interface.

Web flow is not a simple interface.

Web flow is much like the 747 cockpit interface.

And yes, people will absolutely be scared of that kind of interface if they don’t have any education.

But that’s why we’re talking about this.

That’s why we’re talking about education.

Um, and so when you give them the education and web flow invested millions of dollars in top quality education, and now designers absolutely love web flow.

So we, we can do the exact same thing.

Yeah.

And I think there’s, there’s room in this for it not to be tied to WordPress, frankly, just in terms of great design.

There’s, there’s all sorts of design principles you can cover without having to get into the tooling of it.

Um, which I’d love to do some stuff around that.

That’s actually probably a better way to do it because you’re going to get a lot of designers attentions just coming to hear these, this great design content.

And then of course they’re going to learn by proxy that, you know, this is a WordPress, uh, thing, and then you can do these things on WordPress and it’s going to help them be introduced to the idea of using WordPress.

Yeah.

So speaking of exciting formats, Kevin, when are you going to come on a speed build?

Uh, we can get it done.

You know, I, I have objected to, I have a, I mean, I can, I can make some concessions.

I can put some things aside.

I, you know, I, I’ve said that, um, I’m not a, we’ll probably talk about this on a future episode.

I’m not a huge fan of the speed build format.

Come on.

Unless I let’s caveat caveat is unless it’s just like, has that badge.

That’s like, this is for entertainment value only because like, we’re going to skip the way we would normally do things in order for the entertainment of the speed build.

Right.

Yeah.

We’re going to put that badge on it.

Yeah.

Then I think that’s fine.

I mean, when you say a badge, you want a big sign on, on, on, on.

Like it says now, Kevin, Gary, Gary.

So under, instead of just replace Gary.co with for entertainment purposes only.

I think, I think we’re pretty clear on that.

I think we’re pretty clear on that when we do the, do the speed builds, right?

People are always saying Brian course came on it.

He was very, very clear that this is not the way he would build a site.

Right.

Yes.

Um, and so people are watching, you know, I, I just didn’t want beginners, for example, to get the wrong impression of like, Ooh, this is how, that’s how I should do it.

Like I, I should, I should do things this way.

Um, if they understand that it’s no, this is just like, uh, you know, these people are, are professionals.

They do things a different way, but we have this entertaining format where, you know, we’re just here to see what they can, what they can slap together.

That’s, that’s fine.

Yeah.

Cool.

I’ll have to take that as a yes.

I think.

Great.

Yeah.

We can get it done.

Um, who do you want to, who do you want to compete against?

Uh, you pick, I don’t, I don’t, anybody.

What, you know, the, the, the downside of the existing speed builds, I think is there’s, it’s been very, very heavy block editor, right?

Um, we do need to now here’s the only thing, you know, I could, I could do it in bricks.

Um, it would, it would be a little bit before I’m able to do it in etch, but like ideally maybe it would be done in etch or of course I could probably always come back.

You’ve had Brian more than once, I think.

Right.

Yeah.

It’d be quite fun to see you do it in Gutenberg actually.

I mean, if you’re up for that, that will not be a speed build though.

Jamie, that will be me hunting and pecking for what’s going on in Gutenberg.

Well, maybe I just, we spin the wheel and like, it’s what is it?

Is it Wix or is it, is it bricks?

Yeah.

You haven’t had any non WordPress, right?

Well, I’m trying to, I’m trying to have, I’ve been trying to line up some non WordPress, but we’re struggling a bit at the moment.

I’ve, uh, Webflow, uh, um, almost got a Webflow going.

So if anyone out there uses Webflow or Wix, please contact me.

Come on the speed.

We really want to see that.

Right.

How are we doing?

SK says, uh, it makes more sense to create videos to show WordPress people how to have good design sense while coding.

Big issue with DIY WordPress sites is that it looks ugly or outdated.

Even many WP influencer sites.

He’s talking about my site.

I think probably there is he.

He’s been over my website today.

Don’t know.

I I’m not sure.

It sounded more like a point than a question.

In fact, it doesn’t have a question mark on the end.

So just a statement of fact.

Yeah.

I, I, yeah.

I mean, I take that point, but I do think there’s, there’s so many, there’s so many tutorials out there around the tooling.

I’d love to see just some pure, pure pred design stuff going on.

This one’s for you, Jamie.

Cause I think people know what, what my position is on this, but which features currently provided by plugins would you like to see in core?

That’s a great question.

Thanks for that.

Why, why should I answer that?

Not you.

No, I’m going to answer it a bunch of time.

I mean, I can answer it again, but yeah, I think, um, uh, I’m going to say responsive controls.

There you go.

Nice and simple.

A hundred percent.

I would a hundred percent agree with that.

There’s movement.

There’s movement on that from what I reading the rooms.

There’s is there, well, is there a working, is there like, we’re talking definitely submitted something.

There’s definitely conversations.

So, you know, that, that for me would satisfy a lot of people.

So yeah, that’s the one, that’s the one thing I’d like to see.

Daniel says a lot of necessary WP features are in plugins.

Not core.

I get that you can’t promote just gravity forms, but why couldn’t you do a video for newbies explaining the strengths of the top five?

Yeah.

I think that’s exactly what I want to find Daniel.

So thank you.

I want to find formats that do exactly that kind of thing that don’t annoy everyone, but also highlight the coolness around plugins.

So thank you.

I think that’s one of the areas where you’re probably going to just have to chalk it up to like, I’m going to get criticism.

Cause now it’s going to be a question of, well, how did you decide the top five?

Um, and then my I’m number six.

Why did you do five instead of 10?

Like, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

But we’ve got to do it.

I don’t think we can, we can not, not do it.

It’s double negative, but we’ve got to do it.

Cause it’s like 60,000 plugins.

We’ve got to, yeah, we’ve got to help amplify people, help the ecosystem.

Right?

Yes.

I know that, um, it’s, it’s how, how you choose the top five, I think it’s going to be, and maybe you, I don’t know.

I don’t even know how to do it.

We have to think of different formats, but you can’t just go by install numbers.

You can’t just go like there’s other factors that have to absolutely come into play there.

How many beers people buy me, I guess would be.

Well, that’s a tough time, uh, saying that that’s, you know, impartial.

So that’s English humor for anyone.

Don’t take that the wrong way.

That’s clearly not what’s going to happen.

Um, okay.

Eric Gutenberg has changed so rapidly.

I’d love to see either both of you do a full step-by-step list insight with Gutenberg tutorial with dynamic data.

And if possible, faceted search.

Well, that’s not going to be a speed build, but yeah.

I like the idea.

It’s going to be a while.

Yeah.

I’ve done these, uh, I’ve done full builds many, many times full builds.

Um, and what I’ve found is that, you know, most of the work that we do is front loaded.

You do a lot of work on the front end of building a website.

And then a lot of that work is reused throughout the website.

So people always request full builds, but really what you need is to see most of the front loaded work.

You don’t actually need to see how that’s then applied over and over and over and over again on every other page.

So yeah, it’s tough to do that.

I used to run a publishing business in a previous life.

So it’s an area I love and we, we sold classified listings.

Um, so it’s, and we had a team of salespeople selling listings.

So it’s an, it’s an area, an application I know with deeply.

And it’s a bit, I’m not sure there’s, there’s definitely plugins that do this, but there’s no, like, it’s a bit surprising.

There’s no sort of SAS turnkey solution for something like that.

It’s a big old market.

Anyway, there we go.

For you, Jamie, are you going to get a accessibility expert to do kind of a, a series on accessibility stuff?

Yes.

In fact, I’ve got one at the, uh, Amber and behinds is on stage in Portland next week, next Thursday.

You coming to that Kevin?

Uh, yes, I will be at that.

That’s cool.

Um, she’s going to be doing the speed bill.

So it’s part of that as part of, and Brian’s been practicing.

Brian court is up against her on stage.

I’ve been watching him.

He’s, he’s, he’s studying and he’s practicing.

He’s looking good so seriously.

Um, but I think one of the criteria afterwards, how we judge that should be accessibility.

So yeah, absolutely.

We’re going to do some accessibility for sure.

Cool.

Let’s do one more.

Maybe.

Uh, let’s see.

And then we’ll write it up.

This is really just, uh, you know, another request, I guess.

Uh, but speaking more about responsiveness and that’s, that’s, you know, you’re making Gutenberg videos.

That is one of the tough, how are you handling that right now?

By the way, do you, do you go in that direction at all?

I generally, I generally create designs that kind of, I’m going to say intrinsically work.

Yeah.

They’re intrinsically responsive, right?

Yeah.

But it is, it is one of the comments people make on my videos that I don’t often show the responsive.

Layouts.

In fact, I’ve done one today where I didn’t do it, even though it was responsive.

I just didn’t do it.

So, um, yeah, it’s a great question.

So yeah, noted.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, I think that’s probably 45 minutes.

Thanks everyone for watching next episode coming at you, hopefully from Portland.

If we can find a great location with the backdrops of mountains, I think Kevin, that’s the plan, right?

That’s the plan.

And, um, safe flight.

You as well.

How long is your flight?

Four and a half hours.

I think.

Okay.

Yeah.

That’s only 10 hours.

So you’ll love it coming in though.

You, well, I mean, I’ve flown out there once, at least from my direction, you fly literally right past Mount hood.

Yeah.

You look at the, it’s like right there.

I don’t know Mount hood.

That’s a tall mountain.

It’s a giant mountain.

Yeah.

It’s a very big mountain and that’s right out the window and it’s, it’s gorgeous.

Yeah.

Cool.

All right.

Well, I’ll see you in, in the States.

Absolutely.

Look forward to connecting.

Yeah.

I’ll be great.

And thanks everyone for listening and watching and we’ll see you soon.

Good night.

Yes.