Post Status Podcasts

"We're not afraid to let our human side show." —Eric KarkovackIn this episode of Post Status Draft, Eric Karkovack joins Dan Knauss to discuss their top picks for important topics and news stories in WordPress this week. Then they take up the topic of "professionalism." What is it — what does it mean for us in the WordPress community, and how does it relate to a healthy open source project and business ecosystem?Eric's Top News Picks:WP-Optimize "Cheating" Scandal (WP Tavern)WebP in WordPress 6.1 On Hold/Being ReconsideredWordPress.com Now Offering $499 WebsitesDan's Top News Picks:Unethical "GPL clubs" and "piracy" — and what we can do about it. (An emerging discussion in Post Status Slack and on Twitter.)Gravity acquires Gravity — Gravity Forms acquires Gravity Flow and Gravity Experts, product/service businesses in the Gravity Forms ecosystem owned by Steven Henty, Director of Product Development for Rocketgenius – the creators of Gravity Forms.Our spotlight on Jonathan Bossenger — and what he says (and personally represents) that touches our unique ideas about professionalism in the WordPress ecosystem here at Post Status.🙏 Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!🔗 Mentioned in the ShowHow Green is WebP Really? (Post Status)Is There Such Thing as a Sustainable Internet? How Green is WordPress? (raidboxes)Web Almanac (HTTP Archive)Elinor Ostrom, A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems (Science, 2009) Ostrom identified "ten subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of successful self-organization of efforts to achieve a sustainable socio-ecological systems by the communities involved." These variables seem incredibly relevant as things we can do in the WordPress ecosystem to engage in self-regulation and self-governance to deal with bad actors and quality issues. (Summary at The London School of Economics)Nulled Themes and Plugins (Post Status)Demon-Haunted World (Cory Doctorow) "Cheating is a given..."We don’t need no stinkin’ standards! (Post Status)Sarah Schulman, The Trampoline Effect: Redesigning Our Social Safety NetJonathan Bossenger, our Member Spotlight this week (Post Status)Building and sustaining community through mentorship (Post Status)Mentorship as Contribution (Post Status)👋 CreditsEric Karkovack, Freelance WordPress Web Developer (Twitter)Dan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)Olivia Bisset, Web Producer intern for Post Status (Twitter)Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. 🎙️You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

And I would say you're contributing by learning. Like if you're, if you're learning in community, that's a step- Dan Knauss How do we give back? We all want a community of creativity, cooperation, and contribution — how do we get there?In this episode Dan and Ny talk about WordPress and giving back. Giving, making, creating... Looking at the search results for "Make WordPress" and "the firehose" of Make WordPress Slack where the #docs channel was having their weekly meeting, Dan and Ny look at the wide range of options there are for new contributors.,Mentoring and organizing Meetups is a topic that comes up again. That's where Ny feels she has been given the most and most enjoys giving back. However, there are barriers to getting people engaged with the WordPress project — and to work for free.Dan asks what needs to be done to reach younger people. Ny talks about the barriers from a BIPOC perspective, where sensitivity to history and personal stories matters. Dan relates that to an inner city gardening project he volunteered with that had an all-white leadership team. If contributing is a privilege, how can we help elevate more people to that level of privilege?Also covered:How does the older open source culture of contribution (not) translate to the contemporary culture of the "creator economy?"Dan's initial experience with trying to onboard himself in #docs. 🙏 Sponsor: CloudwaysCloudways is proud to sponsor Post Status. Our managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce takes away the cloud server-related learning curve with a seamless and scalable web hosting experience. Trusted by over 250,000 WordPress users, Cloudways gives you the freedom to choose from any of the top IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers for ultimate performance. 🔗 Mentioned in the ShowMake WordPressWordPress SlackDaniel Schutzsmith's Tech Roundup (last week's)Josepha Haden Chomphosy says a new WordPress mentoring program is in the worksDan's post on languages of contribution and creation in WordPress and the Creator EconomyThe WordPress Briefing: Episode 36: Beginner’s Guide to Contributions 2.0The WordPress Briefing: Episode 27: Is WordPress Made for Me? 👋 CreditsNyasha Green, Editorial Director at MasterWP (Twitter)Dan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)Olivia Bisset, Web Producer intern for Post Status (Twitter) Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. 🎙️You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

What's it like to enter this WordPress community media space, especially as the editor of a publication with many voices, personalities, and perspectives?My friend and dialogue partner, Nyasha Green, is six months into her role as Editorial Director at MasterWP, so today we're talking about what that's been like for Ny, what she's learned, and how we look at the WordPress media space we both work in.Unsurprisingly we talk about conflict, communication, personality, and the importance of in-person events. That brings up WCUS — a first for both of us — where we'll meet each other and a lot of people we've only known remotely. It also sounds like I might get roped into a karaoke duet. (Not if I can help it!)👋 Your HostsDan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)Nyasha Green, Editorial Director at MasterWP (Twitter)Olivia Bisset, Web Producer intern for Post Status (Twitter)🙏 Sponsor: ElementorElementor enables web creators to build professional, pixel-perfect websites with an intuitive visual builder. Quickly create amazing websites for your clients or your business with complete control over every piece, without writing a single line of code. Join a vast community of web creators from all around the world who deliver exceptional websites using Elementor.Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. 🎙️You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

Jack Kitterhing joins David to talk about adopting (and adapting) Gutenberg — and Full Site Editing — at LearnDash for their LMS product. The conversation touches on the problem of people in the WordPress community having their course content stolen and resold. What can you do to protect and brand your learning product to deter theft?Why This Matters: You'll gain insight into Learndash as a WordPress company and learn why it's crucial for product creators to onboard and help their customers do great work with their tools. Support the tool you build, the person using it, and the work they do with it if you want to keep them as long-term customers.Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you important news and insights from guests working in the WordPress space. 🎙️You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧🔗 Mentioned in the show:Jack Kitterhing (Twitter)David Bisset (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)🙏 Sponsor: Gravity Forms Gravity Forms is a powerful form builder for WordPress and the #1 choice for businesses and web professionals across the globe. Its vast array of features, intuitive drag-and-drop form editor, and extensive ecosystem of add-ons, ensure customers can design beautiful, intelligent, and accessible forms for any project requirement.

People don't realize how long ago "long ago" wasn't. We're not talking about two, three, four hundred years ago. My family always stressed working somewhere your employer respects you, because it wasn't that long ago they didn't have a choice.Nyasha GreenWe're rebooting Post Status Excerpt as a weekly chat between Nyasha Green and Dan Knauss (and guests—please join us!) about a few of the active topics and discussions in the WordPress community that we feel are most important. Big thanks to David Bisset in his former role as host and curator here, and also to our intern and post-production engineer, Olivia Bisset.This week we're talking about pay transparency. Ny relates some personal experiences where an employer did not disclose pay or how employees were selected for raises. This leads us into a discussion of pay transparency in the hiring process — how it matters to everyone but especially job seekers who are black, indigenous, and other people of color. (Ny has written about this before, and Piccia Neri has been investigating the topic lately.) We also talk about how a lack of transparency can seem to emphasize an employer's distrust and an employee's disadvantaged position — and the effect that can have on a workplace culture.Next, we talk about our own family histories which are touched — in living memory in Ny's case — by slavery and colonialism where work and dignity were extracted from some people by others with the power take their labor without compensation. Ny's great grandfather was born a slave in South Carolina in 1858 and lived until 1963. Dan's ancestors include German settlers in North Carolina who abandoned their earlier beliefs against slavery and began to practice it in the late 1700s. In the Americas and beyond, the past is much closer than we often assume, especially for BIPOC people. History only “bends toward justice” if people choose to bend it that way. It can also go the other way.Finally, we close with how Allie Nimmons experienced a surprising level of hostility to a survey she presented to the WordPress community about the ways we contribute to the project and how we feel about it. There's the community we have now — and the community we need to become. How do we get there? What are the barriers? How can you help?🔗 Mentioned in the Show:Piccia Neri started a discussion in Post Status Slack and on Twitter with a poll about job listings without salary ranges.Nyasha wrote an article for MasterWP, “Put your money where your mouth is: Why we need pay transparency in tech.”Nyasha's great grandfather, Jeff Doby was one of the Last Survivors of American Slavery.Historical trauma is carried across the generations in our genetics, according to researchers like Bessel van der Kolk, the author of books like The Body Keeps the Score.Allie Nimmons shared this contributor survey on Twitter and commented later on some of the hostile responses she got to the survey itself.👋 Your HostsNyasha Green, Editorial Director at MasterWP (Twitter)Dan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. 🎙️You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

Mentor someone. Today! Don't wait. Start today! Talk to people. Connect with them. Go on Twitter. Just 15 minutes a day. Tell them why this community is great. Make them want to join!Nyasha GreenFor Nyasha Green, a healthy tech community prioritizes mentoring. She credits her mentors with helping her find her place in WordPress. How well does your part of the WordPress ecosystem support mentorship? Can we make mentoring a key way people contribute to WordPress's future?In this episode of Post Status Draft, Nyasha Green joins Dan Knauss to tell her story about joining the WordPress community relatively recently. Ny is a Software Developer at Howard Development and Consulting as well as the Editorial Director for MasterWP. Ny credits Ken Elliot and Shambi Broome as mentors who got her into WordPress. Together they're getting two new WordPress Meetups up and running in Columbia, SC and Charlotte, NC.Picking up on one of Kim Lipari‘s comments last week (“We're not a small village anymore.” A Conversation with Kim Lipari — Post Status Draft 121), Nyasha shares her thoughts on the ways the WordPress community can better embrace growth and change by enlarging its circles of leadership, innovation, and talent. For Ny, a culture that prioritizes mentoring relationships is essential. She sees value in paid internships at WordPress companies, intentional programming at Meetups and WordCamps, and the continued use of travel scholarships to welcome new people to an increasingly inclusive WordPress community.Finally, we also talk about dealing with grief, loss, and emotional health in tech, how social media hurts and helps, and resources like Big Orange Heart that are there for you when you're all out of spoons.🙏 Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!🔗 Mentioned in the show:Ken Elliot (Twitter)Shambi Broome (Twitter)“We're not a small village anymore.” A Conversation with Kim Lipari — Post Status Draft 121Howard Development and ConsultingSupporting Underrepresented Speakers at WCUSSponsor Inclusion in Tech (Winstina Hughes)Underrepresented in TechBig Orange Heart and #spooniesSpoon TheoryThere's even a Spoonie Wapuu…of course.🐦 You can follow Nyasha and Dan on Twitter:Nyasha Green (Twitter)Dan Knauss (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)

Laura is the Marketing Manager at MailPoet — a popular email marketing plugin for WordPress. She’s been working in the WordPress space for the past eight years, with experience in both agency and in-house marketing teams.🙏 Sponsor: Gravity FormsGravity Forms is a powerful form builder for WordPress and the #1 choice for businesses and web professionals across the globe. Its vast array of features, intuitive drag-and-drop form editor, and extensive ecosystem of add-ons, ensure customers can design beautiful, intelligent, and accessible forms for any project requirement.🔗 Mentioned in the show:Cory Miller (Twitter)Laura Nelson (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Kim Lipari is my guest today on Post Status Draft. Kim started building a career in WordPress over ten years ago, and her agency, Valet, is almost that old. WordPress isn't a small village community anymore, says Kim, but we still talk about it as if it is. That tightly knit community is still there because — not in spite of — incredible growth. But what does the fact of growth mean for a small village culture? Can it turn into an enclave or cult? Is the language of a small village still an appropriate language for leadership? Do we need to act more like we're a busy city — and make an effort to get to know our newer neighbors' stories? Can we keep (let alone scale) the values, culture, and kindness of a healthy small community as we grow?🙏 Sponsor: WP EngineWP Engine is the WordPress Digital Experience Platform that drives your business forward faster. WP Engine makes WordPress easier and faster. It does the heavy lifting so you can focus on your core business and win online.🔗 Mentioned in the show:Kim Lipari (Twitter)Dan Knauss (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

Miriam Schwab is CEO and co-founder of Strattic, the first WordPress hosting company to allow customers to quickly spin up fast static and headless WordPress sites. Strattic was recently acquired by Elementor. In this episode of Post Status Draft, Miriam talks with Post Status Editor Dan Knauss about her WordPress journey as a WordCamp organizer, agency owner, and web host founder.In this conversation you’ll also learn about:WordPress and performance optimizationWhy everyone should embrace regular people building “terrible” websitesWhy WordCamps are special 🙏 Sponsor: Gravity FormsGravity Forms is a powerful form builder for WordPress and the #1 choice for businesses and web professionals across the globe. Its vast array of features, intuitive drag-and-drop form editor, and extensive ecosystem of add-ons, ensure customers can design beautiful, intelligent, and accessible forms for any project requirement.🔗 Mentioned in the show:Miriam Schwab (Twitter)Dan Knauss (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

In this episode of Post Draft, Post Status Editor Dan Knauss is joined by Maddy Osman. Maddy is the founder of The Blogsmith, a well-known brand in the WordPress space for quality writing that appeals to your target audience and search engines. Maddy has a new book out that can teach you some of her finely-honed skills. It's called Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style.Writing for Humans and Robots grew out of a style guide Maddy created — first as a freelancer and then, as her team grew, a sizeable agency. In this episode you'll learn about:Maddy's business journey: how she first got into web design and WordPress — and then how freelancing led to forming an agency and writing a book.What it means to write for people and algorithms: developing a consistent voice for your brand in writing that's optimized for search engines — while being empathetic and appealing to humans.Accessibility and AI — writing not just for machines but with them, and how that developing technology can be used best.🙏 Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!🔗 Mentioned in the show:Maddy Osmon (Twitter)The Blogsmith (Twitter)Writing for Humans and Robots (Amazon) (Media Kit)Dan Knauss (Twitter)Post Status (Twitter)The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧