WP Tavern

On the podcast today, we have Damon Cook. He’s a longtime user of WordPress, trying it first in around 2008. He’s worked for some of the largest WordPress agencies over the years, but his current role is that of Developer Advocate with WP Engine, where he engages with the WordPress community, trying to figure out where WordPress is headed. Damon is on the podcast to talk about styling WordPress, and how it’s changing. Block-based themes are revolutionising website styling. You’re going to be able to change any aspect of your website from the UI that you’re familiar with. The hope is that it’ll make styling more accessible to a wider audience. Damon talks about the fact that we’re in a period of flux right now. The documentation and tooling needed to work with website styles is maturing, but is by no means complete. We talk through some new concepts which are underpinning all of this.

On the podcast today we have Chris Badgett. Chris is behind LifterLMS, which is a learning management system built as a WordPress plugin. He’s been in the WordPress space since 2008, and has moved his agency away from general website building to concentrating upon e-learning membership sites, course creation and marketing automation. He’s on the podcast today to talk about how WordPress and e-learning are a good fit. Although there’s a flourishing SaaS side to e-learning, Chris is convinced that WordPress allows you to make your LMS site exactly what you want. You won’t be facing the limitations imposed upon you by the platform, and can, if you have the time and skills, modify almost anything to suit your brand and niche. We begin by talking through how well a WordPress based LMS site can scale. We then get into a broad conversation about how online courses have taken off in the last few years. Even before global lockdowns, individuals and businesses were adopting online courses in innovative ways to educate their customers, staff, and the wider public. It’s an interesting podcast and digs into yet another area where WordPress can help people thrive online.

On the podcast today, we have Dennis Dormon. Dennis is the founder of MainWP. A WordPress plugin which enables you to manage multiple WordPress websites from a single dashboard. As you'll hear, the business has changed over the years, as Dennis has learned more about the plugins' target audience. Dennis talks today about how, in the recent past, he's been trying out working with partners as an effective way to increase the plugins reach. As you'll hear, it's a strategy that he's enamored with, given the right partner. We talk about why Dennis built MainWP, and who the plugin was originally aimed at. And it's not what you might expect. It turns out that MainWP is a business which is in just about the perfect spot for bringing on partners. But if you're a developer and have not considered this type of approach with your business, this podcast is for you.

On the podcast today we have Steve Burge. He leads the team at PublishPress, which is a plugin company focusing on improving the publishing experience for WordPress users. The topic of today's podcast is very much in his wheelhouse. If you’ve been following recent developments, then you’ll know that we’re currently in the site editing phase. When that’s done, it will be time to turn our collective attention to multi-author collaboration. But what is that and what does it mean? Steve talks today about why this is an elegant and necessary update to WordPress, but also why it’s a difficult feat of engineering to pull off. WordPress has a history of working with all manner of hosting configurations, and it’s one of the reasons that it’s so successful. Will it be possible to run WordPress on more affordable tech stacks given the burden that multi-author collaboration will require? We also get into the projects that Steve has found from community members which try to lay some of the foundations of how this might be implemented, as well as talking about how Steve’s finding it hard to discover new information concerning this important topic.

On the podcast today we have Matt Medeiros. Matt is the driving force behind many WordPress initiatives. That could be the creation of plugins, WordPress news media, as well as podcasts about all manner of WordPress specific subjects. He likes to juggle multiple projects at once. Currently he’s the Director of Podcaster Success at Castos, which is a podcast hosting company with a WordPress plugin. He’s on the podcast today to give his take on the past, present and future of WordPress. The Matt Report and The WP Minute have enabled us to hear about what the community is doing, what it wants and where its points of friction are. He’s talked to hundreds of people about what WordPress was, is, and might be, and so is in a unique position to pontificate about what WordPress, beyond the software, is. It’s a lovely chat with a thoughtful and far sighted member of the community.

On the podcast today, we have Hannah Smith. Hannah is the Operations and Training Manager for the Green Web Foundation and founder of the Let’s Green The Web campaign. It’s pretty easy to forget that the device that you’re reading this post on is consuming power. We plug things in or charge them up, and they just work. They are sleek and sterile. No pollution comes out of the device directly. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that many of us never make the connection between our use of technology and the impact this has on the environment. Enter Hannah Smith. She’s been thinking about this for years and is on the podcast today to highlight the issue, and hopefully get your ideas about what users of WordPress can do to make sure that the websites we create are having the smallest impact possible. Her approach is not that we need to cease and desist using our technology. Rather, it’s about coming up with new and innovative ways that we can reduce the impact that we have. It’s a fascinating and thought-provoking topic.

On the podcast today we have Adam Lowe. He’s here to talk about a new website building plugin from Pinegrow. Adam does not represent the company, but is an avid user of their products, and experienced in how they work. The ‘Pinegrow Web Editor’ is a desktop tool that lets you build websites with a GUI. The closest comparison would be a page builder, but this is not entirely accurate. Unlike most page builders, which require very little technical expertise, Pinegrow does require an understanding of key technologies to make use of the platform. Given the popularity of WordPress, the Pinegrow developers have created a WordPress plugin, which is just about to be released. It’s been in closed beta, and Adam has been using it as his go-to solution for several months now. We also get into a discussion about the fact that Pinegrow is intended to be a ‘no dependency’ solution. Once you’ve finished creating your theme, block or whatever else you might want to create, you can export that in a way that no longer needs Pinegrow at all.

On the podcast today we have Fränk Klein. Fränk is a self-taught developer. He started out learning PHP in 2011 and from there found his way to WordPress. Over the years he’s worked for Automattic at WordPress.com and WordPress VIP, and is now a principal developer at Human Made, an enterprise WordPress agency. We talk about how Fränk decided early on that he was going to start developing with blocks and, more recently, with the full site editing capabilities now built into WordPress Core. Fränk explains how he sees the adoption of Gutenberg as inevitable. WordPress is moving away from the classic approach of content creation to a more visual, block-based experience. He thinks that it’s important to become an expert at building websites and custom solutions for clients, and for taking the time to learn the new tools that this future will require.

On the podcast today we have Matt Cromwell. Matt is Senior Director of Operations and Marketing at StellarWP, and also one of the founders of GiveWP, a donations plugin which uses the freemium model. He's on the podcast today to talk about whether the WordPress.org plugin repository is still an effective place to host your free plugin. Over the past few weeks, the repository has been in the news for the unexpected removal of stats which many plugin developers said they relied upon. The podcast focus' on a post by Alex Denning in which he spells out why he thinks the repository is no longer viable. Matt disagrees and puts his side of the argument. Can you get noticed given the enormous reach of the incumbent plugins? Is it possible to convert enough users to your paid plugin to make it worthwhile? What can be done to improve the repository for plugin authors? It’s a fascinating chat and is sure to interest anyone thinking about starting a freemium plugin.

On the podcast today we have Christina Deemer. Christina is a senior UX developer at Lede, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a presentation called "embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities". And it's this talk which is the foundation of the podcast today. First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually means, and what it encompasses. It's a wide range of things, and so we talk about how people may differ in the way that they access the web. Memory, over complicated interfaces and readability are a few of the areas that we touch upon. We also discuss what legislation there is in place to offer guidance to those wishing to make their sites more accessible, and as you'll hear, it's a changing landscape. Towards the end, Christina talks about her own late diagnosis of autism and how this shapes her experience of the web, particularly with auto-play content and when web design includes elements which flash or flicker.