WP Tavern

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.

On the podcast today we have Adam Silverstein. Adam is a WordPress core comitter where he works to fix bugs and improve modern web capabilities. As a Developer Relations Engineer in the content ecosystem team at Google, he works to invigorate the open web by empowering and educating developers. At the recent WordCamp US, he gave a presentation entitled ‘Images on the Web - past present and future’. In it, he outlined his thoughts on where the web is going in terms of support for different image formats. This then forms the basis of the podcast. How do browsers actually display images to your website visitors, and what formats are most appropriate where? We also talk about the new image formats, which are seeing more widespread adoption; WebP, AVIF and JPEG XL. We learn about the roll out of browser support, how they have smaller file sizes and when we can safely to use them.

On the podcast today we have Nick Diego. Nick is a Developer Advocate at WP Engine. He can be found creating educational content, building plugins and themes, and contributing to WordPress Core. He’s on the podcast to talk about his passion and optimism for the future of WordPress using blocks. At the recent WordCamp US, Nick gave a presentation entitled, ‘Let’s Build a Custom Block in 15 Minutes’. It was his attempt to show a group of WordPress enthusiasts that the barrier to creating blocks is slowly being eroded, due to the creation of new tools. These tools are creating opportunities for people who might otherwise have stayed away from block development. It’s clear that Nick is all in on blocks, and during the podcast he makes the case for why you should be too. They offer so many opportunities for what can be displayed on a page, and their capabilities are only getting better. It’s a fascinating chat, especially for those who are, as yet, undecided about whether they want to embrace WordPress blocks.

On the podcast today we have Alex Ball. Alex is a Lead Software Engineer at Mindgrub, a digital agency in Baltimore, Maryland. His website leadership experience continues to inform his decision-making today, especially for training clients and making the block editor as easy to use as possible, and that, in essence, is the subject of the podcast today. During WordCamp US 2022, Alex gave a lightning talk in which he laid out some suggestions on how the block editor can be made more straightforward for clients. Most regular WordPress users have become accustomed to the way the block editor works. Over time, we’ve understood how things work and where we need to go in the UI to alter things. For many clients, this familiarity simply does not exist, it's confusing and mistakes occur. Alex talks about solutions to this problem, and he comes at it from different angles. Maybe you lock certain features down so that only certain users can achieve specific tasks. Or it might be that you need to take time to educate your clients more about the block editor and how it works.

On the podcast today we have Joe Dolson. Joe is a WordPress plugin developer, a core committer, and a web accessibility consultant. He’s part of the Make WordPress Accessible team, the team dedicated to improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. His recent presentation at WordCamp US entitled ‘Finding and Fixing the Six Most Common WCAG 2 Failures’, highlights some of the key areas where websites are not as accessible as they should be. The areas we discuss are, low contrast text, missing alternative text, empty links, missing form labels, empty buttons and missing document language. Joe explains what each of these problems are, both in terms of how they can be fixed, as well as what people with accessibility requirements might experience when they visit your site. We also chat about the fact that there’s an ever growing legal compulsion to make websites follow accessibility guidelines. Lawsuits are going through the courts with greater regularity, so now might be the time to look into this topic.

On the podcast today we have Nick Ahmann. Nick works for Inisev, a company which provides SaaS services for WordPress and other platforms. They have a range of products, but today we focus on TasteWP. TasteWP is a service which allows you to spin up a disposable WordPress install in a matter of seconds. From there, you can use the site for free for two days. If you’re wanting to test out a plugin or theme, but don’t want the hassle of creating a site on your own hosting, or local machine, TasteWP could be a useful option. It behaves as a normal WordPress website and you’re not limited to what you can install on top of the defaults. We talk about what promoted Nick to work on this plugin and how he sees it as helping the WordPress community, as well as being a vehicle to make people aware of the products and services that his company offers. If you’ve ever wanted a WordPress site to play with for a few days, then this episode is for you.