Post Status Podcasts

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes and via RSS for your favorite podcatcher. Brian and his co-host, Joe Hoyle, a co-founder and the CTO of Human Made, discuss some of today's hottest, current WordPress news. Stories discussed: Language packs background and details (members only) Plugin translation details WordPress.org sub-site for translations of WordPress, plugins, and themes Trac gardening ReactJS React Europe talks Redux framework Web Pack USTwo site in React with a WordPress backend Loopconf talk on React and Flux Nomadbase React app React and the WP API for a native app A Day of Rest: a WordPress REST API conference Details for A Day of REST

Welcome to the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes. My co-host, Joe Hoyle, a co-founder and the CTO of Human Made, and I discuss some of today's hottest, current WordPress news. Stories discussed: WordPress 4.3 "Billie" released What is on your wishlist for WordPress 4.4? Don't add WP API to Core in 4.4? Mel Choyce's biggest issues with WordPress Who is using WP REST API and why? REST API Documentation A not-so-brief summary of the REST API

Welcome to The Excerpt Episode 4, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to around 15 minutes. In Episode 3, I'm joined by Daniel Espinoza, who is a WordPress developer with a focus on eCommerce, and he also owns ShopPlugins, an eCommerce plugin marketplace for EDD and WooCommerce. Stories discussed: Automattic versus WordPress WordPress 4.2, RC 1 Clever use cases for the WordPress REST API. Taxes! (members only) Big marketing for hosted website solutions. Also in Notes (members only).

Welcome to The Excerpt Episode 3, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes. Draft consists of two formats: long form interviews like I’ve done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to around 15 minutes. In Episode 3, I'm joined by Beka Rice, who writes the excellent eCommerce blog SellWithWP and is a partner at eCommerce company SkyVerge. Stories discussed: Mesh by Automattic, an in-progress app I discovered by accident. Release leads for WordPress 4.3, and 4.4 were announced. April Fools' roundup (Club only, but we talk about them individually), including my own about Jetpack bundling WordPress. A theme shop's year in review. I also covered this in the Club.

StoryCorp is an organization that aims "to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share and preserve the stories of our lives." Featured stories are broadcast nationally on NPR. StoryCorp has published more than 50,000 interviews with almost 100,000 participants since they launched in 2003. A small to mid-size non-profit organization, StoryCorp's interviews are logged in the Library of Congress, and over the years they have created new and ingenious ways to enable story telling. There are recording booths in a number of cities throughout the country where anyone can go and record and interview or story. The first was in Grand Central Station, though it's since shut down due to budget issues. However, booths are open in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Chicago where anyone can make a reservation to record. They also have an Airstream trailer that travels the country and records interviews all over the place. Creating ways for people to share stories is the heart of StoryCorps mission. [caption id="attachment_12144" align="aligncenter" width="752"] The StoryCorps MobileBooth. Credit: StoryCorp Flickr[/caption] One WordPress developer that worked on the StoryCorp project told me, "I cry almost every time" as they listen to StoryCorps on their local NPR station every Friday morning. The stories to tend to be very powerful. I was nearly brought to tears by one where a lady hugs her son's murderer. Another moving story (from my hometown no less), features a father that comes to terms with his daughter's homosexuality. Or there's one where President Obama interviews a boy who overcame adversity to join My Brother's Keeper. Record stories anywhere The latest initiative for creating ways for people to share their story is via StoryCorps.me, a website and companion apps that make it easy for anyone with a smartphone to record an interview and publish it. StoryCorps.me is built on WordPress, and utilizes the WordPress REST API to enable access to a customized content architecture. The StoryCorps app utilizes the API to consume data and publish stories from the app back to the website. I interviewed Dean Haddock, Director of Digital & Technical Innovation at StoryCorp, about how the idea for the app came about, how they use and think of WordPress, and other insights from their short three month development period. A national day of listening Dean says he thinks the StoryCorps app really dates back to a program they ran three years ago called A National Day of Listening, where instead of shopping on Black Friday, they hosted an event where people could tell stories. Dean's team expanding on the idea, and the event turned into a micro-site using SoundCloud's API that made that process easier. That project eventually expanded into the idea that would become StoryCorps.me. Funding for the app The StoryCorps app was funded thanks to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay winning this year's TED Prize Winner. He gave a TED Talk in Vancouver just a few weeks ago, where he shared how everyone has a story to tell. [caption id="attachment_12145" align="aligncenter" width="752"] Dave Isay at TED[/caption] The TED Prize is awarded to an individual with a creative, bold vision to spark global change. By leveraging the TED community’s resources and investing $1 million into a powerful idea, each year the TED Prize supports one wish to inspire the world. - TED Prize website His wish after winning the TED Prize was to "to grow this digital archive of the collective wisdom of humanity." During the TED Talk, he noted that StoryCorps is "the single largest collection of human voices ever collected." The new app makes this mission even more plausible, by having almost no barrier for interview creation. The $1 million TED Prize made it possible. Development of the StoryCorps app With "one tap", interviews can be created and uploaded to the StoryCorps.me website and the Library of Congress archive. Dave shared some of his vision for the app during the TED Talk: Imagine, for example, a national homework assignment where every high school student studying U.S. history across the country records an interview with an elder over Thanksgiving, so that in one single weekend an entire generation of American lives and experiences are captured. Development of the app was managed on three levels. The StoryCorps team did project management, communication, and handled RFPs for app and website development. They also ensured that everything fit the StoryCorps model, and ensured that the new website and app talked to existing StoryCorps software and APIs properly. 10up built the website infrastructure, manages scalability issues, and managed the integration of the WordPress REST API. MAYA design designed and built the app for the end-user, utilizing PhoneGap so that the app could be launched simultaneously to both iOS and Android platforms. [pullquote align="right"]"We knew we going to use WordPress before we started looking for partners to help us build this thing."[/pullquote] As a "small to midsize non-profit," StoryCorps has few resources. StoryCorps.org has been on WordPress, and they wanted to use WordPress for StoryCorps.me as well. The development phase was quite short: from funding to launch took only three months. They launched at TED after receiving the funding last October. For public facing web technology, WordPress is so flexible and so malleable and amenable to whatever we need to do with it, that it really wasn't much of a question whether this was the right platform. What their real question was, Dean shares, was how WordPress could scale if and when they hit a million users, and that's why they brought in 10up. What they learned They are really pleased with how the project has gone so far. However, not everything was a success. They had to pivot and make adjustments as they went along and learned new things and requirements. Dean noted, [pullquote align="right"]"You have to be willing to completely submit to the process."[/pullquote] He says it wouldn't have succeeded if 10up and Maya weren't committed as StoryCorps to the success of the project. They also learned what Dean calls "more tangible" things, like the usage of PhoneGap. Without using a tool like PhoneGap, they wouldn't have been able to "get to market as soon as possible." However, he admits the app could be slightly better if it were built in a native platform to either iOS or Android. Powerful stories I really enjoyed digging into StoryCorps mission and the new StoryCorps.me project. I'm addicted to their stories, and some of the stories that have been uploaded -- such as those in the audio intro -- are really endearing. While there may be an element of noise to the StoryCorps.me archive, it's already evident that many gems will emerge, and who knows what ideas people will come up with for creative ways to perform interviews and record stories. The apps are available on Google Play and in the App Store. It'll be improving over the next weeks and and months. If you're excited about technology at StoryCorps, you can reach Dean at dhaddock@storycorps.org or you can also report issues or ask questions about the app at contactus@storycorps.me. StoryCorps is a great testament to WordPress and its ability to be an infrastructure to an app at scale, while also enabling efficient development cycles. This is probably my favorite utilization of the new REST API yet.

Welcome to The Excerpt, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can also find on iTunes. Draft consists of two formats: long form interviews like I’ve done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to 15 minutes. Content covered in The Excerpt will largely be samples from the members only content, but may also cover free articles and resources. You don’t have to be a member to enjoy The Excerpt, but it is a nice way to preview what members get every day. Here’s Episode 2, which Julie Kuehl hosted with me: Shiny Installs removed from 4.2, in Beta 3 release, (Beta release and Aaron's post). Pagely and WP Engine are growing. Finding your place, by Rarst on HeroPress 1.2 of the REST API (Original release post).

Welcome to The Excerpt, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which was submitted to iTunes recently. Draft will consist of two formats: long form interviews like I've done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we'll cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we set a hard stop at 15 minutes. Content covered in The Excerpt will largely be samples from the members only content, but may also cover free articles and resources. You don't have to be a member to enjoy The Excerpt, but it is a nice way to preview what members get every day. Here's Episode 1, which Brian Richards hosted with me:   Stories discussed: WordPress Beta 1 & Beta 2 — April 22nd live date Recommendationss to improve the WordPress editor by Mark Root-Wiley. Yoast, WooCommerce, AffiliateWP, and others’ security updates. Growth from free themes. I will try and have guest hosts as much as possible. They may rotate or it might just be a few people that are relatively consistent. We'll see how it goes, and your feedback will always be welcome. Let me know what you think about the new show.

Jonathan Williamson is the co-founder and COO of CGCookie, a membership website that provides as an educational resource for computer graphics and modeling. CGCookie has been around since 2008, and today is a network of five websites, has thousands of paying members, a team of six full time employees plus a number of contractors. CGCookie is built completely on WordPress and has a built in membership component. Some astute readers may recognize both the site and Jonathan's name; Jonathan is Pippin Williamson's identical twin brother, and Pippin has worked with Jonathan on CGCookie many times. So, in this interview, you're not listening to me talk to Pippin -- though it sounds like it -- but I'm talking to Jonathan Williamson. Jonathan is as passionate about CG, modeling, 3D printing, and the software that surrounds these disciplines as Pippin is about WordPress and programming. It was a pleasure to talk to Jonathan about what it's like to run a membership site that runs on WordPress. I think this interview will be beneficial for those that want to run a membership site, and also those that work with clients who make their living off of their website. How CGCookie evolved CGCookie started as a blog with news, tutorials, and resources for CG enthusiasts. The first form of its monetization was by selling the source files for the various tutorials. Within about two years, Jonathan and co-founder Wes Burke decided to add a membership component that ended up working far better than they anticipated. Jonathan has been working full-time on CGCookie since around the summer of 2009. They originally launched on aMember, before eventually migrating to Pippin's Restrict Content Pro plugin, along with Easy Digital Downloads. Today, CGCookie has more than 120,000 free users, and they have around 4,700 paid members. Since 2008, CGCookie have managed to not have a full time web developer until February of 2014, when they hired Nick Haskins. You may recognize Nick as the founder of Aesop Stories as well. Nick manages front-end development for the site, and they still don't have a backend developer -- though a backend developer and designer are on their roadmap. How CGCookie's eCommerce setup runs Considering Jonathan is using his brother's own plugins in the real world, it makes for a great avenue for feedback and insight for Pippin to improve those products. CGCookie is using Restrict Content Pro for memberships themselves, and EDD for their store. We talked about whether EDD could be used for both, or if there is room for improvement in the marriage between the two systems, and he believes there is and that it's a goal for the two plugins. For instance, currently, reporting and user management and a number of other features are independent between each plugin even though often times the users that utilize the system may overlap. I asked Jonathan about scaling WordPress and eCommerce for their large user base. He says that scaling for eCommerce has not been difficult, but with over a hundred thousand users, some default WordPress functionality has not scaled well; for instance, some admin areas create dropdowns for all users, which does not work well. Fortunately, there are some trac tickets in place currently to help solve some of these problems. Prioritizing goals for a membership site When discussing challenges running a membership site, Jonathan highlights the internal battles: balancing new features versus iterative improvements. Based on my short experience managing this membership site, I completely agree. For an example, Jonathan told me about a potential question and answer system to help his members get answers for specific technical topics that may be beyond the scope of a specific course. They believe a Stack Exchange style setup that allows them to refer their courses to specific questions would allow them to better serve their customers with the same content they already have. How do you get people to find your content that answers their question, but you don't have a way of just explicitly saying that these are the questions this course answers? They're considering a method of post to post relationships that direct courses as question answers and vice versa. For this feature and others, they try to do things with a short return on investment, but they also don't want to be a slave to it. They sometimes do things "that are important to the quality of CGCookie, that never make a dime." They removed ads last year under that very premise, to make CGCookie a better learning experience. Not the only place to learn Jonathan knows CGCookie isn't the only place to learn, so they focus on creating an excellent community and learning experience for their customers. Realizing that our sites aren't the only way to get certain information is an important thing to know to be able to better focus what we create for our users and why we create it. Pricing for CGCookie CGCookie has pricing for monthly, quarterly, or yearly pricing; all plans renew automatically unless explicitly cancelled. This is a feature they actively A/B test to see what's working and what's not. Behavior of customers varies between the three levels. Jonathan says that the users are more invested in their purchases (and getting more out of it) when they sign up for longer. Quarterly members have 10% longer lifetime memberships and spend three times longer on the site. However, they do have "a fair bit" of what I called "download and dash" members that sign up for a month, download a bunch of assets and cancel. Monthly memberships are also the most popular plan. They've considered locking down downloads for monthly signups but it's not something they want to do unless it becomes a bigger problem; however they do lose money on those customers that download gigabytes of files and videos but only stay subscribed for one month. Testing During A/B tests, they have found that people will be just as likely to sign up for quarterly as monthly if monthly isn't available, and quarterly members are more engaged. One thing they noted is that once people stick around for a few months, the average tenure of a user skyrockets; they have some users that have been a paying member as long as the site has been running. One of my big takeaways talking to Jonathan was about how significant testing can be. Their tests help them decide on the optimal pricing and payment plans to maximize a lifetime value. For testing, insights, and statistics they use both Optimizely, Mixpanel, and Google Analytics. Mixpanel allows you to create custom events in your software, and does require some code knowledge, but it can deliver valuable insights if you use it correctly. Jonathan notes, "It's basically as comprehensive as you make it." They can also mesh tools. They can track which A/B test from Optimizely a customer signed up with, and then use Mixpanel to track what they did and how they did it. They can get login metrics, renewal numbers, and more for each plan and signup flow. Mixpanel requires PHP and JavaScript knowledge to utilize, but Optimizely has an extensive visual interface that doesn't require code knowledge to utilize. What encourages membership signups "It varies day to day, week to week, month to month," in regard to how their signups work. A bad month in the economy can make their signups go down. Sometimes quarterly users will spike while monthly users are steady. Their biggest thing that affects signup rates is customer support. Some presale, but also support for new members to help answer questions and get people engaged. [pullquote align="right"]When they can help someone answer the question, "Where do I go next?", they are able to keep them for a long time.[/pullquote] They have one or two courses that drive a ton of traffic to their site, and it is therefore their largest onboarding channel for new members. However, they don't have a silver bullet for what it takes to get new users. They are always trying new things. On competing and the industry Jonathan doesn't see themselves as a part of a singular industry. While many think of CG as a part of the film industry, it's one of dozens of potential applications, and they don't want to narrow themselves to a particular one. They also poll users to get a feel for who they are and what industry actual users come from. Based on around a thousand responses, they had no real pattern at all. The results were all over the board. So they don't want to compete with a film tutorials site or any other industry site. They want to focus on the tool itself. They want to teach people how to use Blender and show them how it can be applied to various industries their users are a part of. Advice for those running membership sites "Build your community would be the main one. It's one thing to offer a really good product. It's one thing to build a really good website. But if you don't have the community behind you that's going to be willing to trust in you with their wallet ... it's not going to go anywhere long term, sustainably." Jonathan says it's about building the community as well as the sense of trust within that community. He believes that customers will want to know that not only the content will be worth it, but that it will continue to be worth it -- and that the communication and support from the team behind the site will be consistent as well. He believes that subscriptions and products are very different. With a subscription, the interaction is just as or far more important than specific content itself. When he refers to community, he doesn't mean it has to be strictly through something like a forum. He considers it a broad term, and for them it evolved out of their Blender community user base. At the time we recorded this, they didn't have forums, a dedicated chat system, or an actual community integration part. But the community exists and thrives within comments and their gallery functionality. Wrapping up Jonathan is full of great advice and I could listen to him talk about membership sites for a long time. I have no experience with CG but at the end of this interview he had me wanted to go build something with Blender. You can (and should) keep up with Jonathan on Twitter, or perhaps you'll see him at a conference near you -- but you'll probably think it's Pippin at first. Also be sure to checkout CGCookie's website; it's really great.

Last week, I was in New York City for WordCamp and some client meetings. The event was a huge success, with four full tracks of expert designers, developers, and WordPress professionals sharing what they’ve learned. I had a great time with everyone there. I saw old friends, and met new friends. I had my recording equipment with me, and I asked a question to some folks there: how has WordPress changed your life? Here are their answers: http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/how-has-wordpress-changed-your-life.mp3 Direct Download And here are just a few of the pictures I took, from WordCamp and some just from around the city. I’m not much of a photographer, but feel free to use any of these however you wish: I’d like to thank the organizers for their efforts, the sponsors for their investment in the WordPress community, the speakers for their wisdom, and the attendees for their hunger to learn and connect with like-minded individuals. If you’ve never attended a WordCamp — especially one outside of your own city — I highly encourage you do. They are so fun. There are a number of events coming up that I’ll be at as well, so I hope you’ll say hi there: WordCamp Birmingham (August 16th), WordCamp San Francisco (October 25-26th), and PressNomics (January 22nd-24th).

On May 28th, 2012, I was virtually introduced to Chris Lema. He had 653 Twitter followers at the time. I know so, because that’s how we were introduced — through an email from Twitter telling me he was now following me. At the time, he’d not even started daily writing on his personal blog; he didn’t start that until September of that year. It’s hard to imagine a time where I didn’t know who Chris Lema was, or a time where I wasn’t learning from him. Today, Chris is a significant voice in the WordPress world. He was just announced, deservedly so, in the first batch of speakers for WordCamp San Francisco. He’s been blogging nearly every day for two years. I’ve met him at a number of events. We’ve shared meals together. We’ve had phone calls where Chris gave me advice for my career and life. We even spent a week in Cape Town, South Africa traveling together for a WordCamp that I won’t forget. Chris Lema is my friend, and a mentor. I owe him a tremendous amount for his advice, his continuous generosity, and his kindness toward me. And I also know I can’t pay him back; giving to others is his passion, and I’ll never be able match that in return. What I know I can do is pay it forward. As I gain knowledge, and maybe even a shred of my own wisdom, I can pay forward that mentorship to others that are up and coming in their careers, and be to them as Chris has been to me and as others have been to Chris. I’m one of many, many people that feel this way about Chris. He now has 6,500 followers on Twitter — something I note purely as a way to compare to the beginning of this post, and highlight how many people he’s impacted in such a short time. He’s also a direct mentor to dozens of people who make their living with WordPress. What if Chris did WordPress full time? Incredibly, Chris has had this influence and impact on the WordPress community without having a full time WordPress job. For eight years, he’s been at Emphasys Software — a successful company, but not one you’d know of in the WordPress ecosystem — and he’s been coaching WordPress companies and blogging in his spare time. It makes you wonder, what would he do if his full time job were WordPress-centric? I certainly have thought so. And as Chris notes in our interview, I asked him this question while we were in Cape Town. I wanted to see what would happen with Chris full time in the WordPress world, and now we’re about to find out. Joining Crowd Favorite as CTO Chris is announcing today that he’s joining Crowd Favorite full time as its new Chief Technical Officer. Chris was already on the board of the VeloMedia Group, which has utilized the Crowd Favorite brand since its acquisition of the company late last year. CEO Karim Marucchi has wanted Chris to be a full time part of the VeloMedia group for some time as well. But the logistics weren’t easy to work out. However, in the last month or so they really pushed to make it happen, and now Chris will be the CTO as well as a chief strategist for Crowd Favorite and other companies within the VeloMedia group. Chris will focus heavily on reaching out to the enterprise space, via consulting opportunities and a variety of other concepts they are working on. Hear about Chris’ journey to full time WordPress In this interview, Chris and I talk about his journey to working full time with WordPress. We talk about his career, his entry into blogging and the WordPress community, about the structure of Crowd Favorite, and the WordPress economy in general. http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/chris-lema-post-status-draft.mp3 Direct Download It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Chris, and I’m thrilled to see him join Crowd Favorite full time. You can see Chris’ announcement on his blog, as well as Crowd Favorite’s. Also be sure to follow Chris on Twitter, and definitely tell him congratulations on this new journey.