WP Tavern

On the podcast today we have Mike McAlister, and he’s here today to talk about his experiences creating a block-based theme. Mike is a veteran product developer and designer in the WordPress space. He’s focused on the future of WordPress with his new product brand, Ollie. We talk about what a block theme is and why Mike is confident that it's a good time to jump on board as a developer. We also chat about how the Ollie uses patterns and the design tools built into WordPress to showcase just how good block themes can be. If you’re wanting to develop block-based themes, or are just curious about how other developers are building them, this podcast is for you.

Today is a little bit of a departure for the podcast. It's an episode all about the last 20 years of WordPress. You're going to hear a round table discussion with four WordPressers talking about their thoughts on the last 20 years. It features Meher Bala, Robert Windisch, Simon Kraft and Tammie Lister, with David Bisset as the discussion moderator. They cover many topics including a memorable design or refresh in WordPress' history, the most notable enhancement to WordPress core (that wasn’t Gutenberg related), and a memorable community moment or cause. There's also lots of 'forgotten' history and features also come up in the discussion. So, regardless of how long you’ve been involved with WordPress, you’ll learn and maybe have your memories jogged!

On the podcast today we have Mario Santos and Luis Herranz. They both work for Automattic, but are sponsored to work full-time in WordPress. The Interactivity API is the main focus of the podcast today, and if you're working with blocks and dynamically displaying data, this is sure to be of interest to you. The conversation is framed around a blog post written by Mario entitled The Interactivity API, a Better Developer Experience in Building Interactive Blocks. In this, Mario shows examples of what website interactivity is. In short, it’s the ability for content to be amended on-the-fly without a page refresh. We get into the weeds a little and talk about the approach the team took when building the API. The project is still experimental, and they’re looking for people to test and report back on what they find to move the Interactivity API forwards.

Today is a little bit of a departure for the podcast. It's an episode all about the last 20 years of WordPress. You're going to hear a round table discussion with four WordPressers talking about their thoughts on the last 20 years. It features Sarah Gooding, Aurooba Ahmed, Masestro Stevens and Jess Frick, with David Bisset as the discussion moderator. They cover many topics including memorial WordPress release, a WordCamp or WordCamp experience, the most notable State of the Word announcement. It's great to hear so many varied opinions about what's been of importance in the evolution of WordPress.

On the podcast today we have Alex Standiford. He’s a web developer originally from Dover, Ohio, and has been tinkering with web technologies for years, but started his career as a web developer in 2015. Alex has built WordPress plugins, websites, and web applications, and is an active contributor to the WordPress community, making updates to documentation errors, and participating in the organisation of WordCamps. He's here today to talk about how he’s noticed a shift over time in his own content creation. He’s put less effort into his WordPress site and has posted most of his ideas on social platforms. This however is something that Alex has decided to stop doing. For a variety of reasons he wants to take back control of his own content and make his website the centrepiece of his endeavours. We talk about how platforms open platforms like Mastodon are making this possible; how he’s using plugins and his own coding skills to make it possible for cross posting of posts and comments between Mastodon and his WordPress site. It’s a really interesting conversation about the recent surge in popularity of these distributed social networks and how WordPress can become a first class citizen in your digital life.

On the podcast today we have Mark Westguard. Mark is an agency owner and the developer behind the WS Form plugin, and he’s on the podcast to chart his journey in the WordPress space and the different ways he’s explored to grow the reach of the plugin. First up, we talk about why Mark started to use WordPress, then we move onto the subject of turning a well-developed plugin into a viable business. We then explore the subject of turning a well-developed plugin into a viable business. It’s one thing to build a product, but if you’re going to make it commercial, much of the work will revolve around ensuring that the world knows about it. Marketing is a relentless enterprise and one that you should not ignore or underestimate. We also get into the subject of pricing, and what Mark felt was the right place to pitch his plugin. Is the WordPress ecosystem guilty of expecting a lot from plugins at prices which are realistic?

On the podcast today we have Ahmed Kabir Chaion. Ahmed has a genuine love of the WordPress community. He’s been an organiser at multiple WordPress events, including WordCamp Asia, the WordPress Accessibility Day, WordFest Live, WordCamp Santa Clarita, and the WordPress Translation Day. As if that were not enough, he’s also served as co-organiser of the Dhaka WordPress Meetup Chapter, is a former Design Team Rep and a current Polyglots Team Rep. So, Ahmed’s really engaged in the WordPress community, but how did this all happen? The podcast today focuses on Ahmed’s journey into WordPress. The podcast is all about how you can find a place in the WordPress community no matter what your strengths are. Maybe you’re into writing code, or SEO. Perhaps marketing or translations are more your thing. He tells us how he got started just by showing up repeatedly, slowly working out areas where he thought his contributions would be most valuable. It’s a lovely tale of a community member who is truly inspired to make the project better.

On the podcast today we have Ryan Welcher. He's a developer advocate sponsored by Automattic. He has been developing with WordPress since 2009 and before becoming a developer advocate, worked for agencies large and small and as a freelancer. If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ll have come across the new paradigm for content creation, blocks. Every part of your website can now be created and amended as a block. Pages, posts, text, images, headers, footers, navigation and more. This has widened what’s possible for people who don’t want to mess around with the code of their website. You can add in blocks for almost anything, and change how it looks and behaves from within the block editor interface. Ryan is on the podcast today to tell you about the create-block tool, and how it can make your pathway towards block creation a little easier. It’s not a tool which is going to build the blocks for you, but it will help you set up the environment and build process, which you need to get started. Really, it’s all about saving you time and effort on things which don’t really get you building your blocks, but which you need to do that work. If you’ve thought about creating your own blocks, but have been put off by the technical barrier, this podcast is for you.

On the podcast today we have Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs. They've both been very busy in the WordPress space, and what brings them together is that they’re both founders of a SaaS app called Engine Awesome, where Steve is the CEO and Timothy is the CTO. What has this got to do with WordPress, you might ask. Well, they’re here today to talk about Gutenberg, but not how you might expect. It’s Gutenberg outside of WordPress, but Gutenberg nonetheless. Gutenberg is open source. You are free to download it, modify it, and use it in whatever way you like. When Steve and Timothy began working on their new project, and needed a way for their clients to interact with it, they found Gutenberg was the perfect tool for the job. We talk about what benefits they’ve gained by using Gutenberg. How it’s saved them time, and how it’s fast becoming a stable and mature product, which is easy for non-technical users to understand. If you’re looking to build your own SaaS app, or you’re just curious about how Gutenberg is being deployed outside of WordPress, this podcast is for you.

On the podcast today, we have Nathan Ingram. Nathan is the host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and business development topics via live webinar. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, he has been working with clients to build websites since 1995. He’s also the creator of MonsterContracts, which helps WordPress professionals create contracts for their client work, and it's contracts which are the focus of the podcast today. If you’ve worked directly with clients, then you’ll know that things don’t always go according to plan. Assets might not be delivered on time. The client does not respond to your emails. The expectations of the client begins to creep away from the original proposal. We talk about how contracts can protect you, but also provide clarity to your clients about the process you follow. It’s an interesting conversation which makes contracts seem less adversarial and more about ensuring that your WordPress website projects run as smoothly as possible.