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Post Status Comments (No. 6) — The State of the WordPress News European Edition

Pixeldust WordPress Developer

“I totally rely on [the community] now… it’s like an extended family… it means a lot to me and I’m glad that everybody’s hanging on in there with me.” —Nathan Wrigley

After the first Post Status WordPress News Draft went so well, we decided to do a more European timezone-friendly version. The group of news “avengers” that assembled in this episode are Winstina Hughes, Tammie Lister, Nathan Wrigley, Amber Hinds, Yvette Sonneveld, and Malcom Peralty — with David Bisset hosting. In three rounds of draft picks, this group assembled new and interesting picks of the most noteworthy or influential WordPress news stories of 2021.

Also: Video recordings of some of our members’ single biggest news picks were included in this episode.

Post Status Comments is a stage for WordPress professionals to exchange ideas and talk about recent topics and trends.

Browse past episodes and subscribe to our podcasts on  Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or get them by RSS.

Mentioned in the show:

Amber Hinds

  1. WP Tavern: ACF Solicits Lifetime License Holders for Contributions, Urging Them to Purchase Annual Subscriptions.
  2. Sheri Byrne-Haber’s Blog: The ADA Lawsuit Settlement Involving an Accessibility Overlay. (Murphy v. Eyebobs)
  3. WP Tavern: WordPress Classic Editor Support Extended for at Least Another Year.
  4. WP Tavern: Wix Takes a Jab at WordPress with Bewildering New marketing Campaign and Wix’s Negative Advertising Campaign Falls Flat with WordPress Developers and Professionals.

Yvette Sonneveld

  1. WP Tavern: WordPress Community Team Proposes Using a Decision Checklist to Restart Local Events.
  2. Joost.blog: WordPress Market Share Growth Slows Down.
  3. Rian Rietveld: Accessibility Overlays: Common Sense and Nonsense.
  4. WIRED: An Open Source License that Requires Users to Do No Harm.
  5. The Guardian: Online Forums Provide Safe Haven for People Who Suffer from Mental Health Challenges During COVID.

Tammie Lister

  1. Make.WordPress.org: Pattern directory update.
  2. Matias Ventura: Theme.json horizon.
  3. Kjellr.com: Experimenting .
  4. Aino: Theme Update Guide.

Winstina Hughes

Nathan Wrigley

Malcolm Peralty

Additional Contributions via ZipMesssage:

Follow Our Panelists (and Post Status) on Twitter:

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PSC Episode 6

David Bisset: Welcome to the second episode of the WordPress draft. I call this the European edition because we had a people saying, why don’t you make one for the other time zones, let’s go around and introduce our players slash panelists. Let’s start off with Tammy.

Tammie Lister: Hi, I am Tammy. I work with design at SVP, amongst other things and drug was being,

David Bisset: yeah.

So, okay. On our next, on our list, Malcolm, you’re up next.

Malcolm Perotti: Hi, I’m Malcolm Perotti. I’m the co-founder of PressTitan and a product owner at Canberra creative.

David Bisset: Yes. You also do a podcast with Jeff Chandler.

Malcolm Perotti: Yeah. Co-host the WP mainline podcast.

David Bisset: Yes. Feel free to guilt Jeff for not being here by the way

Malcolm Perotti: . I will definitely

David Bisset: not too much. It’s out of his control. Up next is Amber

Amber Hinds: I’m Amber Hines. I’m the founder of equalize digital, which is an accessibility company. And I also organize the WordPress accessibility meetup.

David Bisset: Our next panelist, wasn’t able to meet with us in person, but the panel lie, but she be prerecorded her introduction and her news picks Winstina Hughes, please introduce yourself.

Winstina: Hi. I’m Winstina Hughes. I’m a core contributor and the community contributor. You know, me as part of the WordPress nearest to the meetup community, I’m to be an organizer that works with the Maryland department of transportation state highway administration. I started as an assistant regional planner, and I’m currently working as a customer in government relations manager.

David Bisset: after her

comes the almighty Nathan,

Nathan: um Nathan Wrigley from the web builds podcast and the WP Tavern jukebox podcast,

David Bisset: which means he’s a better, more professional speaker slash podcaster than me, ladies and gentlemen finally is your Yvette.

Yvette: Thank you. Oh my all those podcasts, we’ve had some failed. I work as a team lead community for Yoast, pretty active in the WordPress community, but speaking and in the marketing team and very excited to be here.

David Bisset: Just had some news yesterday about, um,

Yvette: Shopify

David Bisset: I was going to say Spotify. Um, I’m not even going to edit this out. I’m not even good at this out. I talked to taco yesterday. I said, congratulations on Spotify. And he says, everybody does that for the first month.

Yvette: I do it all the time too. So don’t worry about it. And other than that,

David Bisset: all right, so let’s get things started here.

We’re here to share our favorite or the biggest, most influential news stories of 2021 related to WordPress that meant the most to us. And if you are new to this concept at listener, we are going to link in the show notes for the first edition. We did have this a couple of weeks ago. There was no need to listen to that episode first.

This is brand new people with probably a lot of interesting picks. The order has been selected by random.org, Tammy, your first, what is your first news pick for us?

Tammie Lister: Oh, my first one is going to be the pattern directory and that’s the launch of it. So the first bit of it, um, existing, I guess, uh, there, there was a post when it was stolen on the make matter.

And that was kind of like- it had kind of been happening. We could be an adding to it. And over the year more of that’s happened. I wanted to kind of put a focus on that because it’s something more relatable to pretty much use it, then blocks it. And it shown that you can really rapidly build a patterns and from, and maybe I’m slipping into the default theme with patterns, but honestly it feels like a theme that’s kind of running here, but I go that the panel directory is a great news story to kind of start us off

David Bisset: And you may have said so-

Tammie Lister: April, April was the sort of things were happening before, but there was a post on the 28th of April on make matter.

David Bisset: So it was April and man, it seems like we’ve been talking about this for a long time. We’re recording this in 2022 also is not helping much, even if it’s the 5th of January, anytime there’s a new directory and let’s be honest.

What other new directories as WordPress had. I mean, even the concept of a new directory blows a lot of people’s minds because I can’t remember when the theme and plugin directories came into being, but it’s kinda like, yeah, it’s been a

Tammie Lister: while. And I mean, this is the 2022 news, but now it’s opening up the patent actually.

So it’s a whole year span, pretty much from existing to having submission to now being open up for people to start adding. Um, but it’s just really exciting.

Rob Cairns: All right. Well, good, good, good. Will anybody who had that scratch that off your list. Good. Good job. Good first pick there, Tammy. Thank you very much.

Um, Malcolm, you’re up next? What is your, um, first round pick?

Malcolm Perotti: My first round pick is actually going to be the gravity forums. 2.5 update that happened in April as well of 2021. That overhauled UI, uh, changed how I use gravity forms that helped a lot of people kind of, um, use gravity forms more efficiently.

Uh, it had a focus on accessibility. I mean, I don’t, from my perspective, I don’t know how much the accessibility changes really help people. For me like gravity forms is like one of the first plugins I install in pretty much every WordPress install, this, this UI update just made it so much easier to lay out pretty forms.

It made it so much easier just to interact with it. It made it feel more like, you know, day-to-day WordPress. And I think it was one of the most impactful changes that they could have made. And, uh, because it’s the plugin, my go-to plugin for collecting user data for like anything. Um, it was just kind of a really important thing for me and the users and clients that we have.

So that, that huge overhaul that they did for gravity forms, 2.5, um, would be my top story.

David Bisset: That was the first commercial plug-in I ever purchased, uh, or I had a license for. And that was you’re talking like maybe 12, 13 years ago maybe. And their design was definitely the most radical that I’ve seen throughout it.

I think they obviously went for a more block based approach, but it really was. All that different to me. So have you been using gravity forms for awhile? It wasn’t too radical.

Malcolm Perotti: Yeah. And I think the, the big advantage that it gave you as the ability to start really, truly laying out your forms, um, the original format or from version 2.4 and below was really about like a, um, vertical structure form where you could kind of do a little bit more horizontal stuff and put things next to each other and split the form in half and kind of do a little bit more design-related stuff.

I think one of the things that has always held people back from using gravity forms, especially over the last year or two as other competitors have really moved very well in that space is the design aspect of the forms. And so to see them start taking that a little bit more seriously was, was a good change.

David Bisset: So

Nathan: is that, is that

David Bisset: allowed? Oh yeah, this is a discussion. Oh, okay. I’ll privately shame you in zoom, zoom chat, but otherwise,

Nathan: Don Malcolm, do you, do you feel that they were kind of behind the curve a little bit? Do you think their update came a couple of years too

Malcolm Perotti: late? For sure. I think that, you know, in terms of the ability to, as a developer to work with gravity forms, they’ve always been kind of ahead of the curve there, in my perspective, their hooks and, and things like that have been very generous.

And how much control you have the ability to build your own? Add-ons very easily was always very, um, powerful. but in terms of the, the design language of forums and the control of forums, I think they kind of leaned too much on their community to kind of fill that gap and it let them kind of near right lag behind a lot of other competitors in the space.

And I still to this day feel that they’re a little bit behind some of their other competitors in the. Um, true design control and you still kind of have to use some third-party ad-ons to really do really beautify gravity forms without knowing how to develop a code. Um, but I think it’s come a long way and I look forward to seeing them continue to push that.

Amber Hinds: I mean, it’s nice not to have to explain CSS classes to clients, right. That’s how you had to do it before. This is how you put things in columns.

David Bisset: Uh, speaking of now, Amber, now that you’ve spoken up, it just so happens. You’re next? Thank you very much, Malcolm for that one, Amber, what’s your first round pick.

Amber Hinds: Yeah, so I will say that one was not my first round, but it was on my list. So my first round, I think the thing that really got the most attention was, uh ACF asking lifetime users to buy a subscription. I see. It’s interesting because I am a lifetime. Like, I mean, I bought a lifetime license. I don’t know what, in 2011, it was long time ago, but.

Yeah, I also have, and I, and we put it on every website. We built literally every single website, right. So I have more than gotten my money’s worth. We don’t really ask for support, but that said like, you know, we can probably pay more. And, and it is interesting too, because a lot of people were getting really upset about it.

And, you know, I think maybe the way they went about it could have been a little better, but having recently entered the, I sell commercial plug-in space myself in the past 12 months. It kinda, you know, for me, I also see it from the business side. And, you know, and also from the side of, well, if they went away, I use this on every website I built now I have to come up with a different tool.

I feel like it got a lot of one-sided press and maybe not as much.

David Bisset: Was it the concept or how they asked or both or neither? I

Amber Hinds: mean, maybe it was because they didn’t like during black Friday, which is when people are expecting to not pay for things or they’re expecting to pay a 50%.

David Bisset: Yeah. That’s kind of like going up to my parents and saying, it’s like my parents’ anniversary party where I go up to them and says, by the way you owe me 20 bucks, that’s kind of an awkward conversation.

Amber Hinds: Yeah at Christmas, I think, I think they probably could have done a lot more to communicate why pay, you know, what are the costs of this plugin? How many, and I know we’ve seen some that in the past, like the support requests on it are exponential, right? And it’s got a huge free user base that are referring support as well, but maybe outlining some of the numbers on that might have made it more understandable to people, as opposed to just being like, Hey, want to help us out buy a subscription when you’ve already paid for this thing.

David Bisset: When I was thinking about that story and emphasize to me the importance of lifetime subscriptions, um, if you are someone who’s acquiring another company and I’m sure thought went into that. Um, in fact there was, there was discussion even before that notice went out about lifetime subscriptions. But with any business that you’re acquiring that lifetime subscription chunk is obviously something you need to, to pay close attention to. And I think they did, but I think the messaging was probably, like you said, partly mistimed, if you are able to give some additional incentives to people with lifetime subscriptions. Great. If I was starting a new plug-in service today would be one of those very careful decisions you have to make about like, like short-term lifetime subscriptions could be great for your business, but further down the road.

Amber Hinds: Yeah. I mean, like that was something we decided, right. We were like, all right, let’s offer lifetime licenses as like a Kickstarter. Right. So we did it for maybe six months. Never going to do it again. It’s like a small amount. It’s enough people that it’s manageable. It brought in extra revenue that we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t do that.

But it’s not, I think for, from a plugin developer standpoint, you can’t think of that as like. Primary way of selling your product

Rob Cairns: or you do something really evil and you only offer lifetime subscriptions to very, very old people. That’s the only, that’s the only way I can see what we’re working around that, but that would be cool.

Nathan: I was just going to interject here and say, this was the, I think for me, this was the only story that kept coming back in the air. I think it, the, the story itself was June, maybe July, something like that, but that it was acquired from Elliot Condon and, uh, went under the stewardship of delicious brains.

But then, then there was a couple of occasions subsequently where Ernie, I think it was Twitter. Um, the. You might characterize it as a misstep on Twitter, you know, and a poorly thought out phrase, essentially kind of asking, uh, what, what people’s thoughts would be about the, the restructuring of the pricing model and, and the inevitable storm that that happened.

Then most of the WordPress news from the, for this year just sort of happened and went away. This one happened, went away, came back, went away, came back. And then here we are still talking about this six months later,

Winstina: it’s this a maturity, right? We can’t maybe use such wide terms as like forever and lifetime.

We have to be a bit more true to what, what things mean, right. Because lifetime’s a long time and it’s sort of that kind of trust, you know, additional product has had the same trusses and you don’t have in physical products, those kinds of perceptions or those things. And we have to kind of change it’s the growing up of our ecosystem and that kind of changing.

So I think it’s a sign of a positive sign about ecosystem.

David Bisset: All right next up is Winstina Hughes, please heal us. Your first round news picks.

Winstina: I cannot believe that y’all are missing this number one acquisition use melt choice. And how long have you Sandy had been acquired outside of the word prosperity?

All this is talent acquisition, Mel and Helen. I’m a silent admire. Y’all know I’m my own little corner. I want you to know that you will be missed. You are two incredible contributors. Um, Mel, I want to give you prompts for what touches my world really directly. I know that you were part of a 4.8 team, um, core team.

And one of the contributions that you were a part of was that widget and dashboard by let’s, you know, users know about upcoming. So I want you to know that that work that you did, this is really important directly impacts me the stats that you guys gave 30% increase in meetups. Um, that’s pretty special for us.

So thank you for that, Helen. You’re a boss. I just love how full people are. Um, and I, you know, um, just listened to your commitment to Tena, you know, um, you and I spoke really briefly about it. Just really giving them, you know, so much of your, your time, right? And, um, like your, your contribution, um, to building that company and also to making improvements in core is really phenomenal, uh, directly.

That you’ve impacted, um, me and our New York city meetup group, uh, is your being part of that panel of women in 2017, you know, discussing, uh, just the needs of women than the WordPress community are women of WordPress. And so they made up series as a direct result of that panel discussion. And so, you know, thank you for that.

Um, so to take in the fact that, you know, these like really two incredible sources of talent have been acquired beyond the WordPress space.

David Bisset: Yeah. We don’t really think a lot about talent sometimes, especially when it leaves the WordPress computer. Although we, we do, I think we clarified a little bit that, um, Mel hasn’t left WordPress itself.

Um, Tammy, where did you say she was going?

Tammie Lister: I know she just released a post saying that she went to ATF in her review something. Oh, so we can link to that. She did a annual summary and she said where she was going in that.

Amber Hinds: Yeah. I mean, 18 S is the digital services for the government in the United States.

Right. So she’s probably going to do some WordPress there. Maybe not because it’s not explicitly. I mean, it’s focuses a lot on accessibility too, which is kind of cool. That’s probably a footnote right. In the last one, someone mentioned Pippin leaving right after the acquisition of Sandhills. And he’s like, I’m not going to do WordPress at all.

Like, it is an interesting thing, right? It, it changes the community when people like that leave.

David Bisset: It does a lot of the original tech players, like the people who started Google, the people who started obviously apple. Um, there are people that started, um, uh, Amazon, all of the big, big people that started those companies are no longer there. They’ve retired. They moved on. So it’s almost happening. The same thing in the WordPress space with acquisitions and people retiring or moving onto, uh, Nathan, uh, what is your first round?

Nathan: So my first round pick is the, is the ACF news, but that’s been stolen from on-demand.

So I’m going to get it to my, yeah, that’s right. I’m going to go to my pick number two, which is open verse the, uh, the fabulous open verse, which you can find at wordpress.org forward slash open verse. If you’ve not come across this before, it’s basically CC search, which kind of appears to have lost its way.

I don’t really know if that was financial or, uh, bodies on the ground working on it, but it’s come under the stewardship of wordpress.org and it’s, um, it’s a way that you can go and search currently for, well, it says 500 million images, most of which are CC zero. So you’ll be able to use these images and not worry about having to get a lawyer involved in a couple of months time, because Getty come after you because you’ve inadvertently put something on your website, which is copyrighted and the, the most exciting thing isn’t really, for me, that, that exists under the stewardship of wordpress.org. It’s really how this is going to be integrated in the future with the block editor. Just the idea that hopefully at some point in the future, if you upload something to your media library, that there’s talk about the fact that you may be able to just tick a box and that the simple ticking of that box will therefore make your media available to everybody in the same way that you can get other people’s media at the moment.

So imagine how many, how many media libraries contain, how many images throughout the WordPress universe. And it must be tens of millions. And if by simply ticking a box, you could make that available for everybody. That would be fabulous. And that as well, we’ll end up with this, um, talking on a podcast episode with some people that are working on the project, you never know, you might be able to upload your block patterns for, um, various other things like that.

So the scope is much bigger. It could be PDFs, it could be images, it could be audio, it could be video, but also the idea that design, uh, templates, so block patterns. And so on that that you could make those freely available is just fine.

David Bisset: I would love to have a discussion about that. I think it’s, it’s nothing that’s probably going to it’s we’re talking like, like a year, long years, long project, there were

Nathan: several, several years

David Bisset: away, but there that I think fits really well into.

If you listen to Matt state of word, his overall goal is not just about WordPress, but Gutenberg being bigger than WordPress and all of these acquisitions automatic has done through the years about acquiring this piece of open-source. the, You know, this messaging app, this journaling app, tumbler, all of these things, he seems to be collecting one of every type of different corner of the web in and through automatic.

Cause that’s probably where it probably makes financial Lawyerist sense to probably do that. But, but if you want an open web, which has been really pushed for the past year, I think even as much as the Gutenberg has been pushed, this, this CC, um, this creative comments acquire, uh, I think fits well into that strategy.

And I’d love to talk about more about that. I think Nathan, you just, I think I just had a, um, thought explosion in my head, um,

Winstina: talk about democratizing design publishing, but it’s kind of a democratizing of design and the leveling up and access of design for everybody which were part of the work that is happening with the editor is about, you know, enabling everyone to have a base line of design and the boundary, because if you give too many tools to do that, you’re setting people up for failure by having, you know, patterns is one of them, but also templates and having, this knowledge that was kind of locked and told and ancient tools and all those kinds of things, it shouldn’t be, it should be access.

Yes. There’s always going to be a need for craft. And there’s always going to need to be a need for design systems designer, but there still should be access to that information. And I won’t have a design sense and I won’t you think to ask it because I have to experience it. So, you know, it’s part of that.

Just as we try to have coding standards, having design standards before we create as well, I think it’s so, so important.

David Bisset: It has been removed from the board. And I must say that was a pick that somebody had in our last episode to it. So it was a very, very popular, very bird about nines. Yes. But you, you actually brought a whole new angle to it.

So thank you for that, Yvette, what do you got for us?

Yvette: One on my list and it hasn’t the workers, community, uh, announcement that the team was proposing a decision checklist to restart local events, which initially really excited me. And then as the world progresses, whereas I could jump into an event tomorrow or my heart would love to because connecting with the people that I love and that I resonate with and that hanging out with all those brilliant minds can’t happen soon enough, but safe.

So now every time something pops up around in-person events I Get excited. And then I won’t allow myself to get excited because well, safety. Um, but I think the fact that the checklist is there to help prepare events safely is really a good thing.

Amber Hinds: I think it was hard after state of the word. Like I was like, oh, Hey, there, there is a first example of an in-person event.

It was small. And then I heard like a bunch of people got COVID. Right. So, so that it’s like,

David Bisset: and there’s work camps starting, I think next month, um, in, in the U S and in other locations as well. So yeah, but not to, not to put words in your mouth, but the checklist being the top story for you is getting some order and procedures in place.

So regardless of when and how these things start, there’s at least some order to it. Right.

Yvette: I think it’s really helpful that they were there and I can wait. Uh, for events to get started.

David Bisset: Normally I would go next, but I already went, I already shared my news is in another episode. So I’m actually sharing now a real quick one here from, I’m going to say, I’m going to Butch, sorry.

If I butcher your name LA lax. It’s Lax Mariappan. And he’s going to tell us from our zip message, what his new story picked for 2021 was,

Lax Mariappan: um, I’m lax. I’m a backend engineer at WebDevStudios. Uh, for me personally, I like themed dot Jason or like the full site editing experience. Uh, it’s kind of a game changer, but I would say, uh, as I started in 2010 and where you have to, uh, create templates and other stuff, you know, you know, it takes time to do that.

Now it’s all in a single file. Great.

David Bisset: Well, short and sweet and I love that. So if you had themed Jason, the introduction of which on your list, feel free to remove that. It’s something that’s. It’s still kind of developing, but if you can create customizers, people are creating customizers in the web like web forms to be able to customize your theme dot Jason.

Um, I’ll put a link to the introduction of theme, dive Jason from the wordpress.org associated with that pick into, into the show notes for that good pick Lex. Thank you, lacks. I should say thank you very much, Tammy. You are up. We’re going to, we’re doing a second round here, which is second news pick.

Winstina: I am going to tangent on to that, looking at the theme Jason horizon.

And so Makiah slowed the pace back in August about the ingest of horizon and this isn’t necessarily a news post. This is a thought post. And I kind of think it’s really interesting to balance in these posts posts because, um, those are how we kind of start thinking about things a little bit. And this post really was about.

The now and the future of theme, Jason. Um, so theme Jason was a previous year this year and the future year thing. It spanned multiple years really. Um, and in that it really dare to dream about thinking about design structure and portability and thinking about native apps and how it could even control ads, maybe in the future events super-wide in this post.

And I think it’s really interesting to start thinking about, um, there was a term used in it about coded recipe if they have a site looks and feels. And I think starting to not just think of like this little bit of script, which is what we’re kind of focusing on with the, and Jason, but as a mechanism of where it could become how it can ease things like accessibility, just make design more accessible to everybody to understand, and then bring in kind of apps and maybe even a more medical admin space.

So it’s, it’s one of one. Bloodsport pieces, I guess, too. It’s one of those posts that I think sometimes we have all these, like opposition is on the stupid side and stuff, and sometimes posts like this kind of like really quietly. Um, and I think it’s really important to kind of go back to them and kind of digest them.

It’s about that. That was back in August. And it’s a post I’ve gone back to a few times.

David Bisset: Yeah. The sheer readability of dot Jason and its flexibility as loud already. Like I mentioned before, a couple of people creating tools for its customization. That’s the kind of innovation maybe it’s been because of the last couple of years, for me personally, about listening to people, discuss how difficult it is to customize blocks without, and then, you know, ACF and PHP and all of that.

But you know, in the beginning, you know, you know, you have to learn react. You have to learn this in order to do the two blocks and so forth. There was, there was definitely a learning curve there and there still is. And there’s other tools that are helping with that, but just the theme, Jason, right off the bat is human readable.

Winstina: Yeah. I said it needs to be things, but it’s also the mechanism and what it for tolls. And I think that’s the interesting part about this post and the interesting kind of change. Like we’ve, we’ve got the mechanisms and now are they, where can that go and start into that’s something like damning to dream.

And I, that’s kind of what I liked about one candidate for, to dream about the, what ifs in it as well. So yeah, I think that that is something we should do more of. So for me, it was.

David Bisset: And before I dare to dream, I’m going to first next dare to ask Malcolm what his second round draft newspaper.

Malcolm Perotti: Yes. So my second round is actually going to be a story from way back in January of 2021. And basically I want to put it under the umbrella umbrella of like good WordPress search gets harder.

Um, so elasticpress.io, um, was trying to figure out what the heck they were going to do next. After the elastic search project abandoned their open source licensing in, in the general sense of WordPress search is not talked about much other than to say. Basic built-in WordPress search kinda sucks. Um, and this was an opportunity to kind of improve that.

And now there’s been some step backs away from that due to, you know, some licensing issues. Um, you know, there’s, uh, open search, which is a fork of elastic search and there’s a lot of different things kind of happening in that space. Um, I really think that the elastic press service from TenUp is, is a great, easy kind of entry point for a lot of people to get good search on WordPress.

Um, and I’ll be interested to see kind of how they deal with these continuing issues. I don’t know that they’ve announced any change yet. I think the conversation was maybe that they would use open search instead of elastic search, um, for elastic press. And I don’t know if that means they’ll change it to.

Open press.io instead of elastic press that AOR or however they’re going to deal with that, that kind of issue. But, um, I think that, you know, as a WordPress community, we still need to kind of fight for better search in WordPress. Um, it’s one of the two main issues that I see in WordPress currently agree.

That’s what we do. Right. We drop back to Google, which is not ideal, well,

David Bisset: that’s not the open web that, um, yeah, I think if performance, wasn’t such a distracting factor in terms of WordPress, in terms of like teams to put together, I’d love to put a search team together. Performance effects, all WordPress sites.

Search is huge, but it doesn’t affect everybody right now, I guess, because not everybody searches through a site, but they just had an article. Um, I earlier this year about how young people, these days don’t know what a file or folder system. I don’t I’ll have I’ll share the link. I don’t have time to explain it now because

Amber Hinds: I don’t have any frame of reference because vanilla folder stuck in a

David Bisset: drawer, but what do they know?

But what do they know search, right. But what if there was like a little, uh, there’s a, plug-in like this that already kind of exists where you hit a key command on, on your WordPress site. And like a little window shows up, like on a Mac that you have the, um, Alfred or something, and you can type in a few words, but it’s not the UI that it’s the, it’s the effectiveness of the search built in.

Right. So I think Malcolm knew regardless, and I think, uh, please feel free to include any, uh, extra link in there for some of the things that you mentioned. If, if it’s not covered. I definitely think search has been one of those long time neglected. Oh, I’ll just use something else to get by and search WP, which by the way is also an awesome thing as well.

But it’s kind of a slightly, it’s a slightly different tool. Um, I think, but built in better built in WordPress or. Whatever can get us there or thinking more about it, I think is fantastic. So Malcolm hats off to you, because I didn’t even think about that until now. Shame on me. Must be the coffee talk.

It’s the coffee talking. Speaking of coffee, talking, Amber, what is your second round pick? My coffee wants to know.

Amber Hinds: So my second round pick, I don’t think got a ton of traction in WordPress, but it has huge implications for all websites, WordPress websites. Um, and that was, um, the eyebobs versus Murphy settlement, which was a lawsuit against a website that used the accessibility accessibility overlay, and they had it already and they got sued.

And then. Karl groves who was of tenon and is now of level access. People may have heard of him because he did a lot of the initial accessibility audits for Gutenberg. And he actually was an expert witness in that case. And the, the whole, I mean, it’s fascinating. I’ll give you a link to the PDF of the case because there’s a 50 page attachment that talks about how.

Excessively actually adds accessibility problems to websites. And so that was the original piece, which was, they got sued even though they had it. But this year, the big news that really went around the accessibility community was that they settled, they removed the overlay. And as part of the settlement agreement, they agreed that they had to make their, um, excessive, their website accessible the real way, not using an overlay.

And so that really. I wish it had gotten more traction in the WordPress space or with web developers or designers. Um, you know, it’s harder for small businesses, but I feel like even a lot of web developers don’t pay enough attention to this. And, and a lot of them are kind of just being like, oh, I just put an overlay on the site, you know, excessively or, uh, what is it a user way is a really big one in WordPress that probably, I think that one has the most active installed.

Um, and, and this case was pretty much like that will not help your clients. They will get sued. You might get sued too. So for me, that was a huge one.

Yvette: To accessibility experts from the Netherlands actually wrote quite a really good article about that. And you sniped me with the story, but it would be nice maybe to include the link in, in what you were saying, because I think it’s yeah.

Uh, accessibility. It’s just so, so important. And the overlays.

David Bisset: Don’t do don’t do shortcuts like that bad idea. Um, Winstina you’re up, give us your second newspaper, please.

Winstina: My second job pick comes from the post status extra archives, number 37. And, uh, I am pulling from it, Mary job’s suggestion that we have a WordCamp Africa. I love it. I love the idea of having a word camp Africa.

You know, this is a reflection of my, my African pride. I am I’m west African, and so is Mary Job and, and they think that there is definitely an African massive within the WordPress community. And this massive has so much to offer. And you know, this massive, you know, is, is, has like a large diaspora, um, and let’s put together work camp Africa we have, who were in camp US.

Which I wrap heart. Um, we have a WordCamp, Europe. We have a WordCamp Asia. Um, it’s time, it’s time for WordCamp Africa. You, um, have a lead organized already. Mary’s stepped up and said that this is something that she wants. And, I think that we definitely have the resources and we have the capacity to make it happen, whether or not this is a combination of remote, um, you know, having something that’s online and also in person, maybe it’s an online word camp and then like an in-person, contributor day.

I don’t know. Um, I don’t know the logistics of it. I’m in the U S I’m not part of the west African, um, community, uh, you know, that’s, that’s on the continent. I can’t speak to what the needs are. I can only advocate for, for us and say, you know, it’s, it’s time, it’s time where.

David Bisset: Put that on. I was going to say bumper sticker, but that doesn’t, that doesn’t even cover it. That should be, it should be a full-fledged t-shirt and clothing line. I’m actually going to point for her pick. I’m going to point to the news link for the post status episode. She’s actually referring to, to summarize that as best I can, from that conversation with Mary, there is such an explosion of.

Things that are happening in Africa right now, dealing with WordPress and the communities, and they’re doing a fair share of it on their own. And I, and I don’t know if that was the, it’s the best way to describe it, but they’ve started, I think WP, africa.org, they are running with these various kinds of meetups, I think 10 years ago where the WordPress community was in the America and Europe.

They’re, you know, they’re, they’re kind of running their own show. They don’t really have a, they only have a few WordCamps now in Africa, but they don’t have anything globally yet tied together. And I think now that they’re starting to get the kind of, kind of getting that mass, that mass point where they could have some sort of, you know, continental type of movement they’re, um, they’re, they’re becoming more and more unified in their networks and structures.

So I think that’s a excellent link, new suggestion for just making sure that we’re aware of all of the continents and spaces on the globe.

Amber Hinds: Well, I think too, what comes in with that is like, is there a possibility for having more. WordCamps or talks that end up on wordpress.tv that are not in English, because I really feel like that would make a huge difference in allowing more people access to learning WordPress.

And, you know, I don’t know if it’s all of Africa, maybe it is going to be an English word camp. Maybe don’t, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll be French, but, um, like that is an interesting thought, like, could there be a lot of different languages that come out of that?

David Bisset: So, yeah, we’ll see. I mean, obviously COVID is putting some stints in the plans Africa right now is obviously not doing very well with, COVID just like other parts of the world as well, but I think we should just pay more attention, pay more attention to places other than the us and Europe, sometimes a lot of other stuff happening in the rest of the world.

So if you haven’t checked out. My discussion with Mary and the, or at least the links in the show notes for that episode, please feel free to do so. All right, good pick, uh, Nathan, uh, what I, what’s your number two,

Nathan: my number two really doesn’t have a URL associated with it, but, um, it is the fact that we are still as a community.

Hanging in there had a couple of years where yeah, but what, what I’m meaning is, you know, this could literally have fallen to pieces over the last couple of years. You know, we relied a great deal on in-person events. We have gone through an awful lot and yet I see people all over the place. Making incredible commitments to making sure that we’re still able to do things like this.

So here we are. And David, thank you. There’s six of us on the screen at the moment.

David Bisset: I’m thinking don’t thank me. I’m just trying to get away from my family,

Nathan: but I’m thinking of events. One that Springs to mind, uh, is WordFest, uh, an event which is completely free to attend, um, has built a platform to make that event possible, um, loads and loads of people volunteering to, to be involved.

And so that really is, is on what I’m talking about it’s the sort of the maturation of the community, the maturation of online events, the fact that we’ve managed to keep going, we’re patting ourselves on the back. We, we were hoping for events to come around next year, going back to the vet’s point from the first round.

Maybe that’s not going to happen, but for reasons that I can’t quite explain, we’re still managing to hang in there and on the whole, we’re not falling out with each other and. Mirror that across different industries and just see how that falls out. And my prediction is it won’t be quite as rosy as our little community has been.

Winstina: Okay. And my press one, I think we’re adapting to be more robust. So I think in the future, remembering that some people won’t be able to travel. Some people aren’t ever going to want a chapel that some people have changed and people have adapted deadlines and that’s totally cool. And the spec in that going forward, maybe we rely too much on impassive, maybe relied too much on different things and finding these new kids so healthy and it sets us up for stronger and it makes us more global and it helps us.

Be more inclusive if we want to have longevity and we want the habits, it’s part of that doing it. It’s hard to do, right? Because they are easier. Wasn’t easier getting on planes and doing things. It just felt easier because it was what we may be new. But yeah, it’s super exciting to see how we can be more inclusive in different ways.

Yvette: So many of our people, people of our community have relied on each other to get through these periods where, um, not everyone in your physical circles was. Comfy with zoom and, and all the tools that we use that we already use to connect. So we had, uh, I’ve, I’ve been part of a group that played, um, uh, Dungeons and dragons, sir, for a year, like every other, every two, three weeks.

Just to have that moment where you’re not just among your family or on the phone with other family and friends and do something entirely different. And for me personally, I think for the other people in that group too, it made such a difference. Um, not falling out, like you say, Nathan, and, uh, even strengthening friendships.

Nathan: Yeah. I think really, I was just trying to congratulate us as a whole on. You know, if anybody put on an event, if anybody contributed anything or committed anything, anybody showed up and gave 20 minutes here, there, and everywhere to make a thing happen that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. Uh, all of these little paper cots add up to a great big injury, what a terrible analogy.

Um, you get the point. Yeah. But you get the point, you know, lots and lots of little things happening largely in, in many cases on, on song, on accounted for, you know, if it’ll probably never be acknowledged and written about in blog posts or on podcasts, but people hanging in keeping the community together.

And I, for one totally rely on it now, you know, it’s like it is an extended family and it means a lot to me. And I’m glad that everybody’s hanging on in there with me.

Amber Hinds: The zoom meet ups, I would tend to in the past, like two years, I’ve attended all these WordPress meetup. Across the U S and Canada, like once I would never go to, and I’ve gotten to hear other people talk that I would never normally hear speak.

Um, and I’ve been able to speak at some that I would, you know, like you, you’re not going to fly somewhere to speak out a WordPress meetup. Right. Uh, and, and I just feel like I’ve actually strengthened some of my connections with people because of all of the four switch to digital that we maybe didn’t have.

No, it’s a bummer local meetup. We’re not doing the zoom stuff. Cause it feels too hard. But, uh, but there are definitely a lot that are, and I think that’s, it’s, it’s been nice.

Winstina: I know, I would add that. I think it’s, there’s a personal choice there as well, which I think is really nice. So I’ve probably done less meat-ups, but that’s also a personal choice, which I think.

We have that now. And we have the more options that people can do. And I guess that’s kind of an, I am so grateful for all the people, giving all the options for those of us that maybe didn’t have the bandwidth for different people have had to do different things during this time. And different people are going to do different things as a process during this time.

And this is a time which wasn’t just the time that you experienced it, it’s the time that you processed after it because we’re all humans and you need to do that. Right. Um, so we’re going to need to sit so that I even need to take the burden for the people that have the Baton and did all this sauce and stuff for me, you know, that’s that’s community by picking up something and taking it.

Um, and I knew I could stay connected with the community, but I could step back and I could do that because my community was there. Being informed by things that post status and other things. And I could do my creative thing, but that had that information that we didn’t have a few years ago. We didn’t have that kind of thing.

I didn’t need to attend things. Um, so it’s just been able to like turn the volume up or down as you need to still remain connected with the community, but still feel a sense of belonging and still having people check on you. It’s beautiful. Plus one with the beauty and the heart and the group’s hugs, but just the choice having career option choices and personal choices in how you do your path in this community is, is a huge part of this now.

David Bisset: All right. Speaking of love, let’s give some love to you vet. Uh, what is your second round pick here? My second

Yvette: one has to do with, uh, with the growth rate of WordPress, and the fact that that’s actually slowing down and while we’re so like humongous in the CMS space. Um, we’re not growing as fast as we used to be.

Now, part of that has to do with the growth of e-commerce because COVID forced everyone to move to online, shopping, maybe a bit faster than they were comfortable with. Um, but it’s also something that we do need to be aware of. And as some people already have been warning us for, for more than a year, we are losing terrain when it comes to organic traffic.

Um, for people’s searching for things like starting a website, uh, starting a web shop. Um, and there is talk about this. Um, but I think it needs more.

David Bisset: There is going to be discussion more discussion. I think this year about what market share really means. I think we’ve been looking at the percentage numbers and by the way, the, those percentage numbers are, might be going away.

We might not have that statistic by mid-year because Alexa, not that Alexa, the other Alexa, Alexa, that’s been twice. Yes. I know if I say it a third time, she comes through the window or the mirror. Um, but, but that, that, that, um, way of getting in that market share that 43% where it is right now. That’s no longer going to be a source for w three texts, um, coming to, so I think going along with your point and again, feel free to link the provost appropriate news article to that, um, market share slowing down, but in overall, like what market share should we be paying attention to what statute we paying attention to?

And I think your pick fits perfectly along with that, you’re fixated on one number. What happens regardless of how legitimate the number is, what happens when that. Stop slow us down. What does it do? I mean, if it, if it’s, if it’s my blood pressure, then that’s great. But when it comes to WordPress market share maybe, maybe not so much.

Right.

Yvette: I know among the WordPress marketing team, I mean, this is a team that has been growing with ups and downs and all sorts of twists and twirls. Um, but years ago we already asked for things like KPIs and growth and access to analytics, um, And we’re really happy that we have some more sponsor contributors on our team now.

So hopefully this will also spark that fire of where do we want to go? What do our target audiences look like? Um, how do we really convert them from hearing about word press when you’re doing that first research about, um, getting a website up and running to how flexible is this and how am I going to get locked in with, with this or with closed source, et cetera.

There’s so I, one of my pet peeves is teaching this new selling, and that really, uh, is something that we could be better at, within the WordPress community. Um, like entry-level content for people that doing that first research winter building.

David Bisset: Absolutely. Wow. That was a great two rounds. I love the fact that we’ve got so many different perspectives here.

So what we’re going to go through next for the next, maybe 10 minutes is like a, you’re going to go through the rest of your picks that you brought with you. And if you may feel free to mention a snipe, just briefly mentioned the pic. Um, you don’t have to go into detail. In fact, we don’t have the time to go into details on them, but before.

So I’m going to give you a minute to kind of look over the rest of your list and decide what to share as we go through one last time. While I do that, though, I’m going to play responses, things that the community has been sharing, but I just felt like we should share at least one, one is from Mr. Strebel.

Strebel: I think the biggest story of 2021 in WordPress was Jason St. Anne’s full site editing post. That was a meat and potatoes deep dive into the current state of the editor, which as it continues to evolve will be the experience for tens and tens of millions of site.

Um,

I think that got my most, the most attention out of me.

And I’m a little bias. Pepsi was mentioned.

David Bisset: Well, it, it’s not a struggle video without a Pagely mention. So check that box, but I think I, I can’t help, but think that’s a good post to have when you’re viewing, when you need some good absorption on the subject. So kudos to struggle for that. Let me share with you mats real quick here member Doris had said, well, it’s Matt from our report media and the WP minute.com.

Matt Medeiros: I think the biggest story,

David Bisset: I just want to say, just look how you people are listening to this all linked to this and listen, listening just looks so professional. Usually has that jacket on that makes him look like he’s recording from Antarctica. Like if you ever seen him like that, if not, I’ll share it with you later, but I just wanted to say a map before we even hear you.

Great professional job, sending us your, a video here. Here we go

Matt Medeiros: from airport media and the WP minute.com. I think the biggest story of 2021 are all of the new faces in the WordPress community. Showing up on my timeline. I’m hearing them in podcasts. I’m seeing them on YouTube and it’s fantastic to see a whole new cohort of people supporting the community and bringing in fresh ideas and fresh perspectives.

So I applaud everyone really stepping it up, uh, in WordPress as my number one news item for 2021. And Hey, by the way, David Short form community contributed content. This is a fantastic. Idea.

David Bisset: Okay. A compliment will not get past the point that you didn’t give a specific news item mat. So, you know, minus one point for you.

But I do will have to acknowledge that. Um, and this may be Tyson to Nathan’s a bit, a little bit. We are, we’re surviving together as a community and still taking in new people. We’re seeing, we’re definitely seeing new people present their voices. Here’s one more from, um, Mr. Bob, Don here. Hey

Bob Dunn: Bob, do the womb.

The big news is really that you’re here and

I’m here. This is a community. This is open source. This is WordPress. I mean any open source community

and the tool has its ups and downs. And Hey, I’d say there’s a lot more ups than downs

and Hey,

yeah, I’ve talked to new

people. I’ve talked to people who’ve been in space.

I love seeing who is out there and who is doing. With word breasts.

So I think that’s a big news. You’re here. I’m here. Yes, we it’s almost the end of the year. We’ll be here in 2022. So daycare B-cell man,

David Bisset: I think, I think it’s because it’s just, you know, year two, a pandemic, everybody’s kind of just thankful that we’re all here together.

Right? We actually have two more videos. One from Michelle Fran yet,

Michelle Frechette: For me the biggest WordPress news story of this year was acquisitions, but it was specifically the acquisition of give WP into liquid web because it affected me personally. I was the director of customer success that give WP at the time and give WP joined the liquid web family and was under, became under the umbrella of our software.

Which is stellar WP. I was the director of customer success, forgive, and I am the director of community engagement

for stellar WP. I get to do lots of fun things with that, including the

work that I do at post status, um, and being on the team, they’re contributing in many ways

and, uh, what I do in big orange heart, et cetera.

So that was pretty big news for me. And it opened up a whole new world of possibilities and allowed me to do many things like attending the state of the word. So, yeah, that’s what I would say.

David Bisset: And we have a video here from Rob Carnes

Rob Cairns: everybody Rob Karen’s here. I wanted to talk about what I thought was the most important word, press story the year.

And I think it will shock a lot of people, but it won’t, and that’s our community. Our community has had a really rough go with this year between Gutenberg, mergers and acquisitions. And the fractioning in our community to do the other issues, or do you usual wordpress.com versus where press.org and depending on who you talk to, the belief that automatic cause doing the right thing or wrong thing, I think we have a lot of work to do within our own community.

And I think this is the whole future of WordPress and there’s the whole future of open source. And it’s why it’s the number one issue we face today. And that’s the problems in our own community. And it seems the issue has never changed and nobody ever looks at the people causing the issues instead of realizing.

That we need to keep building the community. And one of those reasons, and it’s been hard to do without word camps in the pandemic is to keep building our online communities towards our door on Twitter, with Iran, Facebook, whether it’s the new WordPress product community I’m involved with in LinkedIn, we need to keep building those communities and we need to work really hard at it.

And that is the biggest story. And that’s the future of WordPress. To some degree. I do agree that there is some disagreement in the WordPress community. I don’t think it’s something we haven’t faced in the past, though. If you are interested in the WordPress community, there is an excellent episode, upcoming of post status excerpt, where I talked to Bob Dunn about the community.

David Bisset: I suggest you check out. Like I promised let’s bring out quickly are the picks that we didn’t get a chance to share. Nathan, since you have to step out real quick, let’s take you first.

Nathan: I want to mention, now this, this project may have been going for a little while, but I’m just really impressed with a particular individual and a community that has grown up around a product that he’s released.

And it’s a page builder actually, and it’s called bricks. I don’t know if you’ve come across this page builder in the past, but it seems to be gaining a lot of attention. You can find it at bricks, builder.io. I confess I have not really used it, but I’ve kind of been looking in their group and I’m just extraordinarily amazed at what this guy Thomas has been able to pull off seemingly.

All by himself in the space of, well, I’m going to say it’s about 18 months, but really kind of came around the beginning portion of last year and, um, and in their community and in various other communities that there’s always the contrast. There’s always the people drawing the contrast between the, the, the pace of change on the WordPress Gutenberg side and the fact that people an individual in this case, or a small team in the case of other page builders can manage to pivot and iterate so very, very quickly.

And I just wanted to give a shout out to Thomas for all the work that he’s doing. He’s managed to gather himself a nice sizeable Facebook group of devoted followers. So just kudos to

David Bisset: him. Well, good. That’s another thing I can look forward to exploring, cause I haven’t had a chance to, to explore that yet.

All right. Um, so Tammy, what’s what, uh, real quick here, what is anything left in your truck? Yeah,

Tammie Lister: I have two things. One is the release, uh, Alibaba from, uh, announced the release of eight either. I am O uh, theme. Um, I, it’s an amazing theme, um, that lots of started blood-based themes and happening, but this one was really pivotal for me.

This is kind of was in August. It was very all the way through, uh, it’s got incredible paddle library and also commerce support. And I think that that is kind of essential kind of things. Approach is really one of that systematic approach to design and is a combination. So I think the work that is happening with her and her partner in the studio is really, really crucial for this space.

And the other one is, um, experimentations, I mean, excited about genuinely people experimenting. Um, and how did a. Kind of presentation about that for us. And then he posted that on his blog, his presentation, um, about how by experimenting, using existing features and pushing the boundaries of them. So he did it with block styles.

Uh, we start to know the boundaries, but also what could become. So I think that that shows that, you know, um, we only get to know really where we’re going to go as a project that starting to experiment. And we only get to know how to use these things by experimenting. So those are the two picks that no one picked.

So I’m kind of excited that no one picked my pigs.

David Bisset: That’s that’s a good thing. It shows you’re you’re you’ve you been a worthy, worthy adversary? Um, Malcolm what’s quickly. What’s your anything?

Malcolm Perotti: Yeah. So I was interested in talking about the whole delicious sprains ACF thing, but that we kind of covered that.

Um, the other two things that I had was the GoDaddy plain text password issue. I think it kind of, you know, we have to really continue to think about security, not just in WordPress, but the partners that we use to, um, you know, manage and grow our sites. And then the other thing that I wanted to talk about was, uh, you know, on WP mainline, Jeff posted about his issue with trying to transform two paragraph blocks in an ordered list into a quote block.

Um, I think we need to continue to work on Gutenberg and those, those abilities that we had, um, before with the editor to be able to kind of have that publishing experience be just as good or better with the block editor. I think there’s still these edge cases that are missing that support. So those, the only ones I had left

David Bisset: Jeff seems to hit a lot of those.

I think it’d be, he needs to continue writing. Yeah, let’s see. Um, Amber what’s. Yeah.

Amber Hinds: So that was a great segway into classic editor support continues for at least a year block editor, Ben wagon pretty early. I mean, we did it from the beginning. We still have some clients, especially like universities or government, like things that really need a lot of control that are like, they are classic editor all the way, you know?

And so, so I think that’s a big deal that that’s continuing. And I know they said for a year, I’m certain that we’ll get another year extension next year. Um,

David Bisset: the other thing kind of like my taxes, but yes,

Amber Hinds: the other thing that kinda stood out for me this year was the weird Wix versus WordPress battle,

right.

With sending everyone the headphones and Matt writing a pretty. Snarky dab, field blog posts at them. And you know, it’s, it’s weird. Cause it is, it is an interesting, like, okay, we are a competitor, right. Obviously massively competitor, but at the same time for me, I’m a little bit like. Okay, this feels childish.

Let’s all just move on. Like, what does this say about us? You know, so

David Bisset: I agree. And then Matt mentioned them at the state of the word and that kind of just fell apart

Amber Hinds: very intentionally. Right. And I, and I like some of them, I was just like, okay, come

David Bisset: on. No, but, but no, I forgot about that marketing campaign, the weirdest marketing campaign, guerrilla style.

And then you had the ads with the, with the weird people in the ads, or at least it was weird to me. So it’s the headphones. It was the weird ad campaign. And then there was the public back and forth. So that’s yeah. Let’s yeah.

Amber Hinds: The footnote on that ad campaign too was it’s it was a little bit interesting to see who Wix thought was a WordPress influencer.

There were some people that were like, okay. Yes, of course it makes sense that they would, and then there were other people that were like weird. I got, I had friends from Wix and.

David Bisset: Some people got, and I bet you some people’s feelings got hurt when they didn’t get their headphones.

I’m sorry. I had something in my phone, but okay. Yes. Great. Never forget a Wix 2021. Never forget. Um, that I think this is we’re down to you now. Is there anything quickly you want to just touch base before we close out here?

Yvette: Absolutely. I had some broad match, uh, topics on my list.

David Bisset: Keep it short, keep it short because I got eventually feed my kids.

Okay. Yeah,

Yvette: I will totally do that. Uh, one was an article, uh, about an open source license that requires you to do no harm. And while that’s probably not tying in with GPL, really just like that, I thought it brought up some philosophical things about good versus bad and inclusive versus protecting your community from.

Eagles influences evil being a little bit too strong of a word, but you’re probably get the

David Bisset: Evil spirits.

Yvette: Um, yeah, so I thought I was really interesting and maybe something for conversations down the road, what do we want, what do we not want within our community? Then there was an article about how people who could not attend group therapy physically really turned to open, uh, to, to online, uh, platforms.

And that made me feel really thankful for the fact that we basically have her own mental health blood from inner community where people can connect with people that they’re already have some things in common with, which makes building those friendships and helping each other out really, really, um, so much easier.

Uh, and there’s one really not news, but a thread on Twitter that just really worked my heart. And it was Michelle Frechette offering people in anyone basically who tied in to that or asked for it, uh, To create, um, haikus or limericks or a compliment for them. And I think that was just, well, it was really hard to.

David Bisset: Wow. That’s yeah, let’s not forget too much quote, the technical stuff, but yeah, let’s not forget to the, uh, the heartwarming stuff too. I wanted to share one last one. Last thing, I think it was from Joe. Hey everybody, Joe. Casabona here from the, how I built it. Podcasts and WP review. And I think the biggest story in WordPress in 2021 was the delay of the release of WordPress 5.9, I think since 5.0, we’ve seen, uh, seemingly arbitrary deadlines get pushed.

Even when features haven’t been fully ready. We’ve seen features get put into release candidates, even though there should be a feature freeze then. And I feel like 5.9 is a turning point where we don’t push out the release until the core features. The main headline features are ready, and that is good for the development team.

And it’s good for the end user, which is ultimately. We’ve had some things before in previous releases that maybe weren’t ready or were pushed or something. And we have this thing about deadlines, but, uh, I’m not sure if this is sends a huge trend because I, because I know that there’s four releases may be being planned next year.

You know, we’re squeezing them in like little sausages, but I’m sure everything will work out fine. I’m sure everything is, but this does give you an example of saying, Hey, listen, something wasn’t ready. And I realized there was a big, we, I have a episode with Anne McCarthy on this. Like everything was spaghetti, like everything was tied to everything else.

So you couldn’t really, it was very, very difficult to push just a part of the release out. Um, think I’m going to summarize, I think that’s a decent way of summarizing that. So I think it was a great idea not to wait and pushing out at the end of January, but it does give you at least some precedent to say, Hey, listen, we pay attention to these things.

And if something needs to be moved, it’s moved. So that kind of gives you hope for the future.

Winstina: Uh, so it’s a Bita inevitably. So it’s a difference for two reasons.

David Bisset: I wanted to thank everybody here for participating in this. I thought this was a great, um, great diversity. I think we only repeated like maybe one or two news posts from the previous episode, which shows you like how much there happened in 2021, but also a lot of things that I don’t think I even gave that much consideration to.

And I think when people listen to this podcast, I think they’re going to be able to appreciate the same things I did so quickly around the table. Let’s just say farewell and just remind us where we can find you on social it start with Tammy.

Tammie Lister: Uh, you can find me in common ties and own things and thank you so much.

And I hope everyone has just a calm and the year that they really need.

David Bisset: Yes. Yes. I think my coffee’s kicking in now. So I think, I think I got all that in Malcolm. Um, share with us where we can find you.

Malcolm Perotti: Uh, the best place to find me is on Twitter, uh, at find purpose and, uh, always check me out on the WP mainline podcasts at WP mainline.

David Bisset: And thanks for coming Malcolm. I greatly appreciate it. And don’t forget to rub it in to a Jeff Amber. Thank you for coming. You’ve been a real joy.

Amber Hinds: Oh, thank you for having me. So the best social media for me is on Twitter and I really got to update my handle, but it’s, uh, at a core blog, which is a U C O E U R blog.

And otherwise, if it’s easier, you can just go to equalize digital.com and get to me that way.

David Bisset: And I’m most of you are probably on post status as well. I think, um, at least if, if not shame on you, Nathan, where can we find.

Oh, Nathan and Nathan, I think you’re muted. Otherwise you’re there you go.

Nathan: Sorry. Enormous. PhotoPass sorry about that. WP belts.com or on Twitter. It’s just WP builds

David Bisset: and thank you for coming, Nathan. I greatly appreciate it. You probably didn’t know what you were getting into. And I think this is the first time you and I have talked.

And for all I know,

Nathan: it’s very nice to meet you all

Rob Cairns: It could be the last too for if I didn’t do my job right. Um, and finally, your vet, it was nice to see your face. And I think this is the first time we’ve met as well. Can you tell people where to find you?

Yvette: Yes. Thank you. You’ll find me at, uh, with, uh, at, if had some failed, um, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, um, WordPress slack, and I’ll, I am on post status and over at Dios girl.

Rob Cairns: Okay. Great. That’s awesome. Um, why am I whispering? Thank you Yvette. Very much for that. I greatly appreciate it. I, and I appreciate everyone here. This was meant for the European time zone, but some of you were awesome. You woke up in the morning on an Eastern time zone. Thank you very much for all. And, um, we’ll talk in the future and, um, we’ll see this episode soon on post status.

Goodbye, everybody.