The WordPress Sustainability Initiative

A biologist turned WordPress developer discusses their involvement in the WordPress sustainability initiative, addressing environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainability within the WordPress community. They talk about how the initiative was set up, ongoing projects, and the importance of improving website speed and reducing CO2 emissions caused by plugins.

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Episode notes

Guest

Nahuai Badiola

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, Richard and Justin are very excited to have as their guest, Nahuai Badiola, who’s a freelance WordPress developer, part of the WordPress Sustainability Initiative, the W3C Sustainability Working Group, and a recent recipient of a fellowship at The Green Web Foundation. Today’s discussion covers the importance of sustainability in different contexts, including the environmental, social, and economic aspects. There’s a conversation on the efforts being made towards sustainability and the challenges of translating environmental and social issues for the digital space. Also, we’ll hear about Nahuai’s project called, Doughnut Economics, and his fellowship work with The Green Web Foundation. Download this episode to hear more!

[00:02:14] Nahuai is a WordPress developer, so he tells us when he started, and he talks about the three pillars.

[00:04:37] He tells us about the WordPress Sustainability Initiative he helped set up and its efforts to create guidelines for building a more sustainable CMS.

[00:07:05] We hear about the people who are on the Sustainability Initiative.

[00:09:08] Nahuai discusses how they plan to work with plugin developers and hosting services to incentivize sustainable practices and possibly implement a sustainability score for plugins.

[00:11:54] The conversation is about the need for sustainability in the WordPress community and the efforts being made towards that goal. They also discuss the importance of buy-in from influential people in the community like Matt Mullenweg and Syed Balkhi at WPBeginner.

[00:17:23] Nahuai is part of a working group within the W3C that aims to produce evidence-based guidelines for web sustainability. He tells us there’s a draft in progress and the group aims to present it at the W3C TPAC conference in September.

[00:21:22] We hear about The Green Web Foundation and their fellowship program and Nahuai being a fellowship recipient working on a project to bring the idea of “Doughnut Economics” to the WordPress community through and interactive workshop.

[00:25:39] Nahuai is considering how to adapt the framework of 12 social foundations and 9 ecological ceilings for the WordPress community.

[00:28:10] Richard wonders if Nahuai has any thoughts about making that translation itself an easier process for future people to go through.

[00:30:13] Find out where you can get involved with Nahuai’s projects, learn more about him and his podcast you can check out called, Freelan_dev_.

Quotes

[00:02:47] “I fell in love with WordPress because of the community.”

[00:07:24] “We at WordPress Sustainability Initiative can do small things but have a big impact.”

Spotlight

[00:32:35] Justin’s spotlight is Beginner’s Guide for WordPress.
[00:32:52] Richard’s spotlight is the book, Far from Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds.
[00:33:30] Nahuai’s spotlight is WordPress.