Matt Mullenweg’s WordCamp US Q&A session

[00:00:00] Please welcome to the stage. The co-founder of WordPress.

[00:00:05] Matt Mullenweg.

[00:00:11] Thank you.

[00:00:15] ah, 2002, I just met this guy, Mike Little online. We were thinking about starting something together.

[00:00:25] Uh, yeah, those are, those are kind of a very different internet days, no iPhone. It’s actually kind of wild to think of how much technology has changed since WordPress started. Um, and one thing that I am gonna talk about a little bit, so we’re gonna try to devote today, mostly, uh, to Q and a. So I hope y’all have some questions if not start thinking of them right now.

[00:00:45] Uh, we’ve got a few or one mic here set the one mic or is there gonna be more than one? Cool. So that’ll be where we’ll start asking. But first I did want to take a little time, uh, to just welcome everyone back. How have the last two days. Yeah,

[00:01:06] it’s um, really special to be back in person. And the last few years have really made me appreciate that. Although just from the very beginning, You know, WordPress has always been radically distributed. Um, we sort of lived on the internet, was always our headquarters. Um, how important our in-person time was.

[00:01:25] And now still is for building those bonds between people. I think at the lifelong friendships, the relationships that have started, um, uh, there’s a rumor that in fact, one person who’s. Who’s usually here is not here because is marrying another word presser I dunno if you’ve heard some of that.

[00:01:46] uh,

[00:01:48] and it’s really the bonds, you know, when people ask me what the best part of WordPress is, my answer’s always the people. And, uh, so they able to see some of y’all in person and at the party later is definitely the highlight for. Um, I did wanna, uh, introduce a little bit of, of what’s been going on, uh, with 6.1.

[00:02:08] What is coming up and so much like before we’ve got a little bit of a video, um, to introduce some of the features that are coming.

[00:02:16] One of the things I’m very excited about for 6.1 is that we’re doing something different with the default theme. So the 2023 team is actually gonna ship with 10 different style variations. Um, not unlike if for those of you who might remember the, remember the CSS in garden back in the day. So we’re able to show these variations of the default theme.

[00:02:34] So, um, instead of shipping one theme per year in 2023, or I guess this year, uh, November, we’ll be shipping, uh, And from I think, nine contributors, different contributors. Um, and we got, how many contributions were there submissions for there? I feel like they’re 28 ish, 38 38. Here we go. Um, so keep in mind it, that actually, I think we’ll be able to do this in future years as well.

[00:02:59] So if [00:03:00] you have, uh, would like a design of yours to potentially be on millions and millions of. Um, but you don’t wanna cold up a whole theme. doing a, a variation for, uh, the 20, 23 or 2020 fourth theme. Next year could be a good way to do it as WordPress approaches its 20th year. Um, which is kind of wild.

[00:03:21] we’re we’re not slowing down. Uh, we’re trying to continue to. And creating the most compelling platform, both the freedom of publishing and amazing web experiences for people who, uh, just wanna express themselves online. So, uh, both together, and of course everything we do being open source and inclusive, which is very core to the philosophy of what, um, What’s going on now.

[00:03:44] Uh, y’all probably know this already, but if you like the Tweety thing, um, we’re using the hashtag w C S nice and short this year. And then I am, uh, photo Mac, P H O T M a T T on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, wherever you wanna tag me. And so without further ado, uh, let’s go ahead and hop and happen to the, the questions and.

[00:04:03] Or at least the questions I can’t promise answers but y’all can bring the questions. So, uh, yeah. Make your way over here. If you got a question and it looks like we have someone amazing and brave to kick us off, so introduce yourself and, um, well I’ll say hi. Uh, hi, my name is mil tap. I’m from Serbia and I’m here.

[00:04:23] Uh, on behalf of make teams. So, ah, I’m from documentation team and we started contributing well collaborating, uh, together with other teams like learn and training teams because we have, yeah. Uh, we have needs for the same infrastructure, but there is no infrastructure. And we also started, uh, collaborating with hosting team on new handbook that will happen at best, uh, administration.

[00:04:54] And we really want to collaborate with core team mm-hmm to have dedicated documentarian for every developer. So we document everything while it’s being developed. So we don’t ever again ship code that is not fully documented. Mm-hmm . Now my question is. Because we are doing this all in private messages and that’s not the way for open source mm-hmm can we have some, you know, support for meta team or something, uh, to make this, uh, to create the infrastructure for, for collaborating between teams?

[00:05:31] Hmm. so, would that be like a, a channel on the slack or a new P two? What, no, not, not just that, you know, uh, when you start with just a, a release mm-hmm , there are changes. And now we from documentation, we document that mm-hmm , there has to be some waterfall, that information goes to learn team and, uh, support team and, uh, training.

[00:05:55] So if we could have some system where, uh, it, it. [00:06:00] kind of expects us to work together. Mm-hmm not to be just separate team. I mean, we can discuss this tomorrow at contributor day to see how we can do it. We just know that we need to do it. Yeah. The good news, all the changes are happening and, um, in source control and so everything is there.

[00:06:18] Yeah. Yeah. Maybe what could be a good role, um, is someone to keep an eye on that? Yeah. And do like a notification. So, uh, that could be even more than a new form. It might just be like a. Uh, way for people to contribute. Yeah, that would be also great. That’s that’s the way that I try to keep up with things as well is keep an eye on like the GitHub issues and, and the change sets used to read every single one, but not so much anymore.

[00:06:41] but I would say that if you, if you wanna know what’s coming, reading the change sets and we have pretty good commit messages now is by far and away the best way, uh, to do it. But I could where perhaps if that’s, um, if that might be too technical for someone who else yeah. Who wants to contribute otherwise, someone to translate that, um, could be.

[00:06:59] Yeah. Cool. Thank you for the session.

[00:07:07] so, uh, non-serious question followed up by our serious question. Sure. So welcome back, uh, in honor of you being back in San Diego, are you gonna do Irish car bombs again tonight? I. I don’t remember the last time doing ’em so they must have worked. Wow. that was our, our first word camp here in San Diego, 2011.

[00:07:25] So this, and there was photographic evidence of that. I seem, I seem to recall taking photos of you behind the bar. you know, as, as I entered my late thirties, hangovers seemed to last longer, sorry. I drink a lot less. . Cool. So, um, so a little bit more serious of a question is, um, you know, recently I had, I had, uh, as a developer work on a, a project on wordpress.com mm-hmm

[00:07:49] They didn’t wanna move despite my urging mm-hmm . Um, and, you know, I ended up, uh, you know, having to really go through the process of working on there mm-hmm and seeing some real, you know, like struggling to work through being on.com and some limitations that are on there. Mm-hmm , um, it was not a great experience, uh, as a developer and, um, like.

[00:08:10] I , I’ve used some very strong language about it before, but like, it was very poor experience as a developer, like working on the platform and, and getting anything done. Like as, uh, I was created as an admin, as a user, I couldn’t install plugins or themes. Huh. Um, you know, they had their, um, their main account, which, um, I guess was what was paying for their premium service.

[00:08:36] Mm-hmm I had to be logged in as them. To be able to install or edit plugins, that sort of thing. Hmm. So, um, my question is what are we doing about.com? This is the thing that really drives. You know, the, you know, this, what, what we’re doing here, right. This like really pays for all that. You know, like what, where, well, some of it, not most of it , I’m sorry.

[00:08:59] Yeah. [00:09:00] So, but I mean, that’s, I mean, the majority of like, you know, the, the user, uh, base that we have is WordPress, right. Is, is, comes from the.com. So, um, Probably it’d be good to talk about a little bit of the history and then what’s some of the latest stuff that maybe you haven’t seen yet. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:16] I’m just kinda curious. We’re we’re I feel like we’re being overlapped by Squarespace and WICS these days, right? Mm-hmm like onboarding user experiences, like, you know, taking. Significant leaps above and beyond what wordpress.com I think has now. Yeah. And I’m kind of concerned that some of the dip in user base that we’ve experienced in the last year or so is kind of a direct result of that these public companies that have the money that have the background.

[00:09:45] Throw all kinds of stuff at that. Like we have almost an infinite supply of, you know, like contributors mm-hmm , uh, as, as being an open source platform. Yeah. And I, I think that what’s missing is a little bit of is the vision. And maybe you can talk a little bit about maybe there is some upcoming vision to that.

[00:10:01] Yeah. Originally WordPress do com started as, like you said, a way to onboard brand new people. Right. And it was a big multi-site instance. Right. Um, Uh, there were a lot of plugins and things built in, but you couldn’t modify the code or install your own or things like that. Um, what changed is on the business plan and.

[00:10:19] Um, you now it’s a full essentially like VPs type site mm-hmm um, so you do get complete control over the code top to bottom, including being able to install plug-ins and themes. Right. It sounds like this, this, uh, customer might not have been on that business plan. Oh, he was? Yeah. Oh, they were okay. Yeah. I had to be logged in as him to actually do any of that.

[00:10:36] I couldn’t even as an admin user. Yeah. I couldn’t do that. Which is they might have set you as the wrong role cuz you should be able to. And the thing that just launch. I wanna say last week is now full SSH and WP C I access mm-hmm . Okay. So, um, it is something we’ve been a lot of people don’t know about this yet.

[00:10:51] Mm-hmm but, um, definitely we’ve been hearing from a lot of developers and we wanna make it a developer friendly place. Right. We also launched a pricing change that we ended up rolling back that brought the full, um, kind of hosting access to basically every plan mm-hmm and lower the price. And that ended up being a huge disaster for some reason.

[00:11:08] so we, we reverted back to the old plans. Sure. But yeah, there’s, uh, new things launching there. I would say developer focus is a big part of it. Mm-hmm and particularly if you haven’t yet check out the. The SSH and, uh, N WP C L I access. Okay. And of course what’s happening on the back end. That is unusual.

[00:11:26] There is, um, actually multi data center failover and also super high performance, including high frequency, CPUs and everything like that. So you can actually run like very advanced, uh, LMS sites or R commerce sites or other things on it. So if you haven’t checked it out recently, uh, check it out again.

[00:11:42] Okay. And in fact, that platform behind it. Uh, WP cloud wp.cloud, which is now being used by a few other folks like pressable grid pay some other hosters starting to license that as well. Right. Um, cuz this is one of the highest performance. Yeah. I was talking to Patrick this yeah. This afternoon. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:57] Um, but sorry, you had a bad experience there and [00:12:00] definitely I would say right in on the, the admin thing mm-hmm because maybe that’s a bug. Okay. But the other things like the SSH hashtag just launched. So check that out again. Okay. Thank for the question. Yeah. Good to see you again.

[00:12:18] Hey, uh, my name is James I’m with PMC. And my question is if you could wave a magic wand and make a WordPress problem, that seems otherwise insurmountable. Just disappear overnight. Huh? What would you, uh, what would you choose? Hmm, I’ll pick two. Cause one really drives me crazy. . Y’all know the capital IDs in the in the database tables.

[00:12:46] oh my goodness. what were we thinking? Uh, I think that goes all the way back to the B2 days so that, um, that would be one I would change and we probably can change at some point. We just need to migrate some things. I think, uh, none of people actually directly create database, so we could do that. I guess I’m gonna wait this magic wand three times.

[00:13:06] you’re the boss you’re in charge the second one. And I think there is some solutions for this. Um, but you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about, um, projects that really build for the long term and think not just in years but decades. And of course, open source has some of the best ones of these. And what I’ve been kind of particularly enamored with recently is actually SQL.

[00:13:28] Um, as, you know, they, they try to think about their data formats, um, you know, being accessible for decades to come like a, a really safe data storage format for rich data. And so something a little more native in terms of supporting SQL light, I think actually would pair very well with WordPresses thoughts on longevity and permalink and everything like that, that we try to sport.

[00:13:49] And third thing I would say, which, you know, came up in a lot of questions, particularly in Europe and other. Is, um, if we could help people onboard better, uh, to get involved with the community. And I think particularly with the, um, loss of a lot of meetups during COVID, they’re now starting to catch back up and I know there’s actually gonna be some focus on that a contributor day tomorrow, by the way, who’s sticking up today.

[00:14:14] Ooh. Wow. um, that’s great. I think was it, was it Portu? We actually ran out of food and chairs and stuff. cuz we had so many more people at contributor day. Um, so I, I think, you know, the best way to get involved with the WordPress community is typically sitting down at a laptop with someone else who’s already involved and like, um, kind of walking through it and learning and uh, learning together.

[00:14:39] And so meetups contributors coming back and everyth. Um, it’s fantastic. I would love to get better at doing that in a distributive fashion. Mm-hmm so I think we’re, we’re pretty good at it. If you’re in person or able to come physically to a contributor day, but as y’all know, like we had to cut the cap, the tickets quite lower.

[00:14:58] This is I think the [00:15:00] smallest word camp us since, um, a while I kind of love it, cuz this feels like the old days. not quite 2002. That one would’ve been much smaller. Um, a lot of people dunno, but the very first ever, um, word. Was organized with only like a few weeks of notice. And we did it at the Swedish American music hall in, um, in San Francisco.

[00:15:20] Uh, I just saw amazing documentary as well called. Um, we are as gods, which is, uh, about Stewart brand, who is this amazing character who founded the whole earth catalog, which of course inspires Steve jobs. And, um, they were going to sell the original. I think he also organized the very first ever hacker conference, kind of like around the home brew computer club and everything like that.

[00:15:40] And in the documentary they had. Pictures of this first conference. And gosh, if you wouldn’t believe it, it was at the Swedish American musical . I was like, wait, I recognize that weird place. um, so that in person is helping, but I would love for us to whether that’s online pairing or, you know, Uh, online meeting times that are in different time zones and things to make it easy for the folks who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to come to a work camp or meet up, um, get involved.

[00:16:09] Cuz that’s, I think part of the power of, of our online community as well, time to wake up. thank you. Thank you.

[00:16:22] Oh,

[00:16:23] do you mind helping with a mic? Yeah. Got it. Michelle Ette with stellar WP at liquid web and post status. So, whoa. yes. My question. This woman in WordPress, what’s that busiest woman in WordPress, maybe

[00:16:40] merger you’ve met Josepha, right?

[00:16:45] Mergers

[00:16:46] and acquisitions have been a hot topic in the last few years. What are your thoughts about this for the WordPress ecosystem? Mm-hmm do you think it’s a good thing or bad thing?

[00:16:54] Why or why not? Hmm.

[00:16:59] Um, I think mergers and acquisitions are value neutral in and of themselves. And it’s more about what happens afterwards.

[00:17:06] So I think it’s natural that particularly when we enter moments of economic, UNC, Which we’ve certainly had a lot of in the past few years and might be going into more of now. Um, or when markets are super hot, like they kind of were a year ago, uh, for there to be some consolidation or folks that particularly have a lot of equity value in their stock to use that, to, um, to join up.

[00:17:27] And, um, I’ll also say that having done over like 25 of those , but on both sides of, of a lot of those, including as an investor, um, they they’re tough to do right. And. One thing that I actually see helping, uh, in the WordPress community versus acquisitions that happen in more general technology is, um, there’s so much philosophical alignment across a lot of the organization in the WordPress community, including very many of ’em being distributed or having a strong, like distributed aspect to them.

[00:17:59] And [00:18:00] so of course, like having the open source ethos. So, um, I feel like the WordPress organizations are really good influences on. And, uh, certainly at automatic, we’ve had a lot of inspiration from, you know, some of the cool things that other organizations do including around contributor days or how they give back or all sorts of things.

[00:18:18] And because there’s so much sharing and blogging about it, , there’s just a lot of cross-pollination, which I like, um, where they’re tough is just integrating different cultures are hard. Um, sometimes, uh, founders might leave after an acquisition or just there might be sort of like a organ reject. Uh, then the cultures of a new organization, an older organization.

[00:18:39] Um, one way we think about it is that when we buy a company, we’re hoping to both influence them and be influenced by them. So automatic itself is kinda like a different organism once the cultures merge and depending on the size of, of what’s joining, um, That might both take a while or be a really big change, like, uh, for us, one of the most, the largest ones in terms of people is, uh, Tumblr, which is about, I think 200 people, 180 people when we bought it.

[00:19:05] So that has, uh, been an interesting process. I would encourage, you know, folks who, who work on acquisitions or do ’em in a space to think about the, uh, the day that’s deals is signed as the halfway point, not the finish. Hm. Because however much work you did getting to that, uh, and working together is I think you need at least that much on the other side to really intentionally integrate the cultures and onboard people.

[00:19:31] Well, and also just make sure there’s not something, um, you know, kind of lost in the bureaucracy that’s happening around like expense policies or, uh, vacation resetting or just all the kind of logistics, um, that sometimes we can forget about when those things. So I’d love you to have you on post status.

[00:19:47] We can talk about it more. I’m happy to always happy to join the podcast of the different WordPress, uh, publications. And thank you again for the question. My pleasure.

[00:20:06] Hey Matt, I’m Matt Graham from, uh, wi be Ontario, Canada. Um, love, I love wi actually what’s that I love wi be wi be. Was that? Oh no. Is whi be no whi I’m thinking of wouldbe island. Nevermind. Yeah, I haven’t been to Woodby Ontario. That’s okay. It’s very small. I wouldn’t expect many people in this room to even know about it.

[00:20:22] So it’s all good. Um, so much has been said, discussed and argued, uh, about accessibility in the block editor. Uh, though the block editor is technically accessible. Mm-hmm uh, efficiently efficiency is greatly hindered for those who are blind, low vision and keyboard users. Mm-hmm um, is there any plans to move forward, uh, to, to move the block editor forward from being technically accessible to functionally accessible?

[00:20:49] Hmm. and what would make it more functionally accessible? Like what would be an example? Um, cause I know we put in a tremendous amount of work. Yes, absolutely. Make it all keyboard [00:21:00] navigable. Right. And, and simplify some of the navigation right from, uh, uh, my, uh, my accessibility expert actually sent me like a really long message and I tried to slam it into like a paragraph mm-hmm

[00:21:14] this might not be the same, but back when, when it first launched was like having to, uh, hit tab or, uh, you know, back buttons to like 20 times just to bold something. Yeah. Something like, like to reduce that somehow. Um, and even moving, uh, blocks up or down in, in the hierarchy seems to be very, which is why we created the navigator.

[00:21:38] Exactly. So like it moving more towards that. I like, I, I definitely agree that there’s been a lot more done, uh, recently with that, but is there, is there more plans coming up to make it even more so, so very much so. So I would say that, um, especially if you were to compare, well, one thing that’s tough is that the block editor is giving.

[00:22:00] Exponentially more functionality right than more of a traditional document editor or, or different things. Um, we do put a lot of work into creating keyboard shortcuts for everything, and a good amount of testing, including creating some entirely new interfaces. To allow sort of faster, particularly keyboard based navigation.

[00:22:19] But of course, accessibility is more than just that mm-hmm . And so particularly if there’s feedback from users or it sounds like, uh, uh, this person who sent you the long couple paragraphs. Yeah. Um, one, if they haven’t checked out recently, check it out because it’s been incredible improvements. Actually, WordPress 6.1 is including 11 releases of G.

[00:22:38] So we’re still releasing at a very, very fast pace. Yeah. Um, it’s actually the part of WordPress that’s having the most commit activity and the most growth in the past year. Um, and feedback, particularly from users who are using different assistive technologies is really invaluable. Cause the, even the standards of other things, like you said, what we might do technically might not reflect how a certain client or a certain use case.

[00:23:04] Um, so that real world usage. Is really, really helpful, particularly because like for user testing, it can be difficult to find enough users that access the technology in different ways. Yeah. The final thing I’ll say is that, you know, the WordPress both has API and multiple ways to do things. So for example, if someone were primarily just writing blog posts, For example, it didn’t really need like the advanced layout capabilities of, of the site editor or the block editor.

[00:23:32] Um, I would actually encourage to use a difference, um, method of posting, including, you know, there’s lots of desktop clients that talk to XM, RRP C or the rest API. And, um, and I have given some thought as well as if actually for the entire interface of WordPress, if there could be an interesting project to create kind of a parallel API driven, um, version of it that was designed to perhaps have.

[00:23:56] I hide some of that more advanced functionality for the [00:24:00] everyday use case. Again, particularly if you were doing like something more like blogging on it versus the full layout stuff. Yeah. Right. And so you could access that more complex interface if you needed to do that particular task, but for the everyday it could be a simpler one.

[00:24:13] So that’s already possible with the APIs. Um, but I think actually a pretty interesting, uh, approach for like the accessibility team or something. Um, because we now have. API is pretty much everything. So you could actually create a completely parallel WP admin with not that much overhead. That could be a much simpler markup or something.

[00:24:32] Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you,

[00:24:43] UA. Megan from Canada here. Uh, coy, coy, multilingual, and word. It’s always been the last priority. Unfortunately, not the last well I’ll so in the Gutenberg roadmap that we know, it’s actually number four and that’s the last on the list. over 60% of people that’s cause we haven’t announced five or six yet.

[00:25:07] I’m patient. I wait over 60% of people in the world speak more than one language. Yeah. Over 25% speak three or more. Wow. I’m curious as to why it’s always been a lower priority and what we can do specifically, what you think personally, this has not been a higher priority. What barriers do you see that we can start forking towards?

[00:25:30] And what can we do in the next three releases to finally let WordPress democratize language? Hmm. Yeah. This one comes up. Although I think this is one of the first times I’ve gotten it at work camp us. Usually I get this question at work camp Europe for perhaps obviously I took a long flight to get here to ask you that.

[00:25:54] Okay.

[00:25:57] Where’d you come in from, by the way, uh, Ottawa, Canada. Oh word camp 2023. Also, we’re gonna plan a 20th year birthday party for WordPress. I think everyone else should too, maybe. Oh, nice. I’m curious who came here? The furthest, I met someone from Pakistan earlier who thinks they came in the furthest.

[00:26:11] Where? Where? Oh, from Pakistan. Yeah. Nice. How about over there? Australia. Australia. Where Australia. Whoa. Wow. Although in flight time, I think you said 30 hours, right. Of travel. That’ll do it. And where, how about in the back? Where from yes. Karachi back is not. Yeah. Uh that’s that’s a long one. Thank you. By the way.

[00:26:36] um, so there’s a few questions in there. Um, one multilingual and WordPress today, and two, why is it further down in the Gutenberg roadmap? So I’ll try to address those separately. Um, multilingual today is obviously not in core, but the good news is there are a number of pretty good plugins for it. And so many, many WordPress sites are multi are run in a multilingual fact, um, actually who here runs, uh, WordPress in more than one language.[00:27:00]

[00:27:00] That’s, that’s pretty good. Yeah. Um, that looked like about a five or 10% and we’re in work us, so I’m sure it’d be much higher. Uh, if we had asked that same question, work camp Europe, or one of the international. Um, so very possible. And I was actually, these plug-ins are pretty good. , you know, knock doors, a specific, I one, I used to work at one.

[00:27:18] I can guarantee you that , but they still cost money and that’s not the democracy we’re trying to build. And some of the, and most of ’em have free versions. And then some of them have paid upgrade. Some of the things, um, it is tricky, particularly the data model for it. So that brings us to why it is later in the Gutenberg roadmap and just do a quick refresher.

[00:27:37] Version, uh, sort of phase one of Gutenberg was blocks sort of the post editor phase two, which we’re in right now is taking those blocks and allowing you to edit the whole site. Cause that’s what we’re now calling to site editor. We’re moving away from the full site editing term and probably don’t call it site editor.

[00:27:53] Um, phase three is workflow and collaboration. Uh, which there’s a little bit of attention earlier, cuz there’s actually a lot of folks who wanna start that right now. And uh, I’m actually trying to pump the brakes a little bit cause I really wanna get our site. To a point of, um, of excellence and accessibility before we move on.

[00:28:12] Um, and then fourth is the multilingual. So, and that’s the only four of the phases that we’ve announced. So. Um, one of the reasons I really wanted to create the building blocks sometimes, literally, uh, before we got to multilingual is because to me, one of the big parts of creating a, a really great multilingual experience is that collaboration and workflow.

[00:28:33] So when content is created in one language, how does that then flow to the other languages? What does that look like? Um, And so having some ability to have some different roles and workflows built into WordPress, I think is gonna be really key for doing that. Well, the other thing in why multilingual is gonna be, I think, tricky to, uh, address in core, if you notice a lot of the WordPress plugins for it actually use different kind of models of the data and some use other tables, some use the post table, but regardless of how they work, it’s.

[00:29:04] It’s very tricky because you move to kind of a one to one relationship between like a page and a post or, or the content there. So almost like a mini to mini, and there’s so many different workflows. Like some sites want every single page translated and some might want a subset or some might want how switching works, you know, whether that’s URL based, subdomain based cookie based, you know, there’s so many different ways, uh, to address it.

[00:29:29] Do you. Um, the same slugs, which is kind of what’s in the URL for all of ’em. Um, so like slash contact and then, you know, just a content is, uh, translated. Or do you want a way to map, like it’s contact in English and someone tell me that in another language a different word, right. Would be, would be in the URL.

[00:29:51] Uh, so that kind of mini to mini approach is honestly, um, gonna add a tremendous amount of complex. It’s a WordPress and I’m actually [00:30:00] still not a hundred percent, whether we should do more of a core plugin for it, that’s officially supported and, and created by by folks, but maybe not actually distributed with core WordPress, kinda like budenberg was in the beginning.

[00:30:10] Um, or whether it should actually be in core, just because it, um, creates that. But the number one thing I, I do want to figure out there is the data model, because then much like page building plugins can all now use cool wor WordPress blocks. And that’s kind of a new standard versus having like a different way to do blocks across the different page builders, whether you’re on beaver builder or der, you know, whatever, um, if we could make it.

[00:30:33] So, um, all the multilingual plugins we’re using kind of common data structure, I think that would be much easier for other plugins to integrate with them, but I don’t know what that right. Data structure. And, um, I don’t think we have enough folks to work on that simultaneously with these other phases. So, uh, it is really kind of a matter of focus and it drives me crazy because I get this question every single time seems natural that we wanna grow our market share, and this is the way other softwares make it a little easier.

[00:31:02] Yeah. Anyway, thank you. Well, I don’t know if they it’s possible. I haven’t seen also an implement. That does it in a super great user way yet either. Um, so that would also be something like, if any of you. You know, whether it’s another CMS entirely, or one of the plugins for WordPress that you think like really nails the user experience.

[00:31:22] I would love to spend some more time with that because the complexity of this mini to mini and how the workflows works, how the euros work, everything like that. Um, it appears, I haven’t seen like a perfect implementation. It’s more like a series of trade offs or implementing a subset of it. Hm. So I will follow up with you on that.

[00:31:37] Thank you. Thank you. GRA

[00:31:44] Salita ATO . Hi, Matt. My name is be Paul ha and I have a question about tomorrow is to contribute today. Yeah. And um, if you’re saying, I don’t know if you do, but what would be the favorite, the most favorite thing for you at contributor day to work? Oh, I, I believe by the way, is it that we have 17 of the 21 make teams represented as well?

[00:32:11] representatives online

[00:32:12] and all 20

[00:32:14] outta 20 representative. Oh, cool. I’ll repeat that. So she said there there’ll be some representatives online as well there, so there’ll actually be 20 of the 21 teams, which team did make it plugins. Oh, no, it’s okay. Plugins. Aren’t that important? Right? we’ve got a lot of ’em.

[00:32:32] Oh, where’d you go? Oh, there you are. um, so yeah. Hmm. Uh, you know, something that I’ve actually really enjoyed at previous ones is, uh, there’s so much on wordpress.org that I think is, you know, we just redesigned the homepage and a few are the things. Um, it feels like there’s a lot of lift from relatively simple changes, whether that’s more CSS or just copy based, um, that could really improve.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Both the core, main WordPress auto org site. And I also think a lot about the Rosetta. , you know, again, um, being relatively monolingual, at least for natural languages. Um, I don’t know, probably some folks in here could say like on the es.wordpress.org or one of these other ones, how good of a job are we doing?

[00:33:17] Both having compelling copy that’s, you know, relevant, that’s maybe synced up with the, what we learned to be best on the main site. And, um, it’s kind of a version of the last question. what’s the workflow for propagating those changes in different directions or is there more that we can do particularly.

[00:33:31] Rosetta sites, which is our international sub domains, um, to be more compelling and relevant for that market. So that would probably be my pick all. Thank you. Thank you. And looking forward to seeing lots of y’all there tomorrow as well.

[00:33:47] Hi, Matt Philippine from south Florida web advisors. I got a quick question. Many of the people in the room I get use blocked editor. That’s the direction of things are going in, but there’s a lot of folks who are still using classic ed editor, still using page builder. Whenever I do a new install. It’s a pain that I gotta remember to go in and install classic editor, classic widgets.

[00:34:07] Could there be a toggle for during the install to say install in classic mode and, and throw those plugins in automatically in that way. You’re not having to. Do it every time there could be, but now okay. Okay. Thank you.

[00:34:23] No, it’s okay.

[00:34:27] Let me give a slightly longer answer there, which is that, um, You know, we definitely are gonna, you know, we actually, I think it’s extended how long we’re supporting the, the classic editor, the plugin and everything like that. Technically it’s, it’s not too hard to keep that going for a while because we still need to have kind of tiny MC support and other things kind of embedded within Gutenberg.

[00:34:47] We do have a classic block in Gutenberg as one example that provides a legacy sport. So if you open a post that was created before, um, Gutenberg existed, you can still edit it and convert it the blocks. If you want to really simply. But very much. So, uh, the preponderance of new development in WordPress is, is really focused on the block editor.

[00:35:06] And so any effort that we could put towards adding that toggle or something, we’d rather put into making it. So you don’t want the toggle anymore. and someday it sounds like that day is not yet, but that, you know, that won’t be the first plug in you install. And more and more. We want users, uh, to also be demanding that because they want a functionality of a block or an integration with a plugin, which primarily operates through blocks because it just allows.

[00:35:30] Um, such a more common user interface to what could be very, very advanced functionality. So, um, all the new developments going into that and think of classic as just like a stop gap. So if you’re. If you’re still building sites with classic in 2022, like see how you can maybe minimize that or, or migrate the users, spend an hour with them to teach.

[00:35:54] ’em how the new stuff works because it’s really the future of WordPress. So thank you for the question.[00:36:00]

[00:36:04] Hello, sir. How are you doing? I have a quick question. You may not have a quick answer, but, um, I’m William Jackson represent my wife, Ida, and we’re real interested in knowing we’ve been teaching about the meta. And on onboarding people and applying it to a business aspect as well. We wanted to get your idea of how to metaverse in its growth and immersive and immersive, um, communities and societies.

[00:36:30] Have you taken that into account or how you can apply it or, um, work with WordPress or in some fashion? Hmm. Um, that’s a good question. Thank you. so, so we’re teachers, so we always try to ask good question.

[00:36:49] it’s interesting because, um, you know, Operating and developing connections online. Mm-hmm , uh, has really been my entire adult life even before I was an adult. Right. And it was so powerful to me from a very young age, to be able to say online communities, like going back to even like BBSs and IRC and everything like that, where, uh, my physical identity or age or parents or anything.

[00:37:13] Mm-hmm , um, wasn’t a barrier. To connecting with folks. Right? Um, particularly I was pretty young. My voice was like three Octas higher you met me in person. You wouldn’t take me seriously. Like, I’d walk in a best buy to, you know, I saved up money to buy a camera. They wouldn’t even talk to me and stuff like that.

[00:37:29] But then online, you know, I had my usernames Photomat before that was I think, illusion or something, you know, my hacker names and my mm-hmm , it was fun to be on the forums and learn about right. Whatever it was. From BBSs to, uh, phone ING or whatever it was. That was right. Uh, kind of what I got into in my youth.

[00:37:47] And then of course, You know, a lot of particip informs and getting involved with open source mm-hmm , which is still one of the things I was gladest to this day things. I was so glad to stumble across right in my life and is something I hope to be the rest of my life. So the element of the what’s now called the metaverse of like being able to put on and off online identities and participate more in the basis of your contributions or your avatar.

[00:38:11] What, however you choose to present yourself online, I think is like one of the best things about the. And, um, and very cool that the WordPress community is so good at translating that into person where it, I’m sure a lot of you have experienced this already, but like very much a community where people don’t show you a book by their cover.

[00:38:29] And, um, it’s great. You know, every WordPress event, you’ll see folks from tons of different backgrounds, ages, everything like it’s like, doesn’t matter. We’re all here combined by like a similar love of open source WordPress and everything like that. And that’s what I think one of the best parts.

[00:38:43] particularly, you know, a lot of the recent conversation around metaverse is centered and pushed by like Facebook now, meta mm-hmm and very much around their investments in VR. Right. Which is, uh, not insignificant. I think they’re spending like five, 10 billion a year. Um, and the hardware is getting better, [00:39:00] better, right.

[00:39:01] Much faster. And, you know, in theory, like Apple’s gonna come out with a. Uh, headset or there might be some AR type things. And, um, if that technology was to follow similar curves, that cell phones have over the past, which now 15 years since the iPhone was introduced. And I guess even prior to that with like M devices and handsprings and stuff, um, I could see five or 10 years from now.

[00:39:25] Maybe a lot of us wearing these things in the audience. Um, okay. I would certainly love something that would like remind me of someone’s name or something. when I met them or like some sort of scanner, like that would be, be kind of cool. And I love y’all wearing glasses already. So if the technology got to a point where it could be embedded in a glass, um, that’s pretty cool.

[00:39:42] And then hopefully we don’t have to wear masks then, so they won’t flog up so much. right. . but my personal experience is that screens are still really good. Mm-hmm . And so I I’ve enjoyed VR for example, the headsets for like gaming or just having fun. But I think it would be hard for me to imagine wearing one of these mm-hmm for the amount that I’m on a computer all day right.

[00:40:04] Yeah. And, you know, having a screen that you can put in your pocket, take out, look at show people share really easily, right. Um, is still pretty. Uh, so I’m not actually convinced that the sort of VR use cases mm-hmm um, are going to be as ubiquitous as right. More screen ones. Um, unless there was some sort of breakthrough in technology that is just like impossible to imagine for at least for me yet.

[00:40:28] Right. I’m sure. In the depths of apple or meta, they have some prototypes there that are pretty neat. Yeah. And in the meantime, I’ll say that games, forums, there’s so many online communities that are, I think, fulfilling all the promise of what metas saying could happen. So if that is appealing to anyone, I’d encourage ’em to.

[00:40:47] Spend some more time on some of these online committees that exist, including like the roadblocks and Minecrafts of the world that create like really rich worlds. Okay. Well thank you. Yeah, cuz we’re seeing more and more conferences reaching out to us to, to see our ideas and opinions about how to integrate people into conferences like this, into the metaverse and you know, people come in as avatars.

[00:41:06] So we just wanted to kind of get your, your, your perspective of the way it’s gonna go and how it’s happening so we can kind of guide what we’re doing and, and teach. And so thank

[00:41:16] you. Appreciate. Thank you.

[00:41:22] And just to follow up there, maybe that could be a fun, like work camp. Uh, I definitely, you know, now that we can come in person, it, it wasn. Not as interesting, but during COVID I definitely went to a few of those online conferences and software advanced pretty quickly. There was even an online burning man one year, um, that, uh, I think there were actually multiple ones you could access to different, um, different platforms.

[00:41:44] And it was interesting, uh, not as good as the real verse , but, um, oh, coming up and, uh, but still per D. So was that. Sorry. I couldn’t hear that. [00:42:00] Oh, okay, cool. Um, how about lightning round? Try to get through the rest. Yeah. Okay. We have a hard story. Hard. Oh, hard stuff. What time? 5, 4, 5. Oh, okay. So I’ll try to answer short answers.

[00:42:12] So, but, uh, we’ll try to get through these five and if not, we’ll have to stop right at the 5 45, so sure. Clarifying on a question. Hi, I’m Courtney Robertson from goad pro at work camp Europe. I asked about the, um, translation on learn.wordpress.org mm-hmm . And I’d like to clarify that question was more around courses.

[00:42:33] We do have ways of storing some of the other languages, but courses are using sensei pro mm-hmm so. I’m not sure on the timeframe of multilingual mm-hmm and I would like to see an alternative before we wait that long yeah. To make languages more available. And if that means a plugin or a Rosetta site or something to maintain that I’d like to see that get unblocked.

[00:42:57] And then, um, related to that, you and I had a convers. and slack around the data of how many views or what the access is on learn mm-hmm . And as we know on.org gathering too much data is a little bit tricky because people don’t like a whole lot of data being gathered, especially on, on open source site.

[00:43:15] Mm-hmm , um, it would be helpful. So those are areas that I’m not sure if we can get unblocked, but it would be really nice too. I think we could. Yeah. Okay. So we can continue that on, on the.org stack, but I know we do run like Google analytics and. So we’ve, we’ve shared that with different contributors.

[00:43:30] Okay. So that should be too hard. And I do think we do have some other language courses on learn as well. So it’s a little bit of a manual process now, but it is, it is already happening. Right. And do you have an ETA on overhauling? Make the main make.wordpress.org. Pete, I don’t think currently on the roadmap.

[00:43:46] So perhaps that’s something people could take a look at tomorrow. Cool. Thank you. All right, lightning round. I’ll try to . As you can tell, I, I, I can be loquacious, so I’ll try to keep these short, uh, hi, I’m Nathan, uh, from elegant themes. Um, one of those weird people that got into WordPress for blogging and still does it to this day.

[00:44:03] Cool. if anybody remembers. Way back in the day, like WP mods I wrote for them. Wow. Um, and so I fell in love with WordPress as a blogging platform. It’s been my profession for like 10, 15 years now. And, uh, whenever I go to word camps or I, especially with surprised at word camp for publishers, that it wasn’t actually for people like blogging, it was like for news organization.

[00:44:27] so, um, Uh, you seem to be at a very interesting position right now is like the, the company, um, that acquired Tumblr mm-hmm , um, that reinvented the editor within WordPress, uh, for Gutenberg. Um, we. Kind of seeing a potential for new ways to revolutionize blogging itself as a, as a medium. And what’s possible there as someone at the nexus of all that.

[00:44:49] How, what do you see as the future of blogging? Ooh, um, short answer. Um, yeah, so a quick stat, uh, half to people coming to wordpress.com are [00:45:00] actually blogging and. And we’re seeing a ton of activity there. Things I’m most excited to work on one, like, as I mentioned before, we’re switching Tumblr to be WordPress powered that’s.

[00:45:09] So I think that could provide a really nice in, uh, sort of like gateway into the WordPress world. And I’m sure I hope it’s future work camps. They’ll be like, cuz Tumblr’s are a younger audience. People who started on Tumblr and then now are like at work camps, writing plugins, things like that. I think that’d be really cool.

[00:45:24] And. Uh, things that we’re working on right now, particularly the re remainder of the year that some teams focused on are the reader. So cuz I think, you know, since Google reader’s been gone there, hasn’t been a good way to follow other blogs and commenting. I feel like commenting, um, is, uh, there’s not good interactions for follow up.

[00:45:42] So I think both of those can help reinvigorate cuz of course comments are the best part of blogging. And uh, so keep an eye on for some improvements there, both in jet pack and wordpress.com on. Okay. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:45:57] Hello,

[00:45:58] uh,

[00:45:58] David yard from Orlando. Um, first I wanna thank you for the awesome photo that you took of me and John Maita back at a random obscure meetup where I was more nervous than anything else. . Um, and also you said people, um, thank you for having a speakers here who are challenged by the attendees to be better and do more cool stuff.

[00:46:18] Um, my question is, uh, after talking through a few people, Um, it kind of seems like WordPress has a marketing problem where it is an amazing platform. We know the power of it. Um, but really, and truly only developers are kind of like welcome at the table. Um, so as designers, as UX people as brand strategists, we’re just kind of like, yeah, WordPress, person’s great.

[00:46:43] You should get it. And then hopefully pass you off in the hands of a great developer or if you’re lucky and you find someone that is kind of like that. And so be it right. Um, no pun intended. Oh, snap. Um, so how do we, uh, or what would you see as the best way for designers in the field content, people to kind of come together to, uh, collaborate around those more and, um, not make it so technical, so to speak.

[00:47:10] Hmm. That is why we started Gutenberg is to try to open up. The flexibility and power of how people are able to customize if they knew code in the past or just got good at building themes and things, uh, to a much wider audience. Um, we also, there’s gonna be a design table tomorrow. So come to that, if you’re, or maybe you’re already at it, I bet you are.

[00:47:33] uh, I, I will say that, um, one thing I hope to develop is a more culture of, um, open source participation from designers. And part of that is. Showing the impact of like user research, design, everything. And I think at least what I hear developers in WordPress is they’re really hungry for it. Um, because we, we might do a first version of a design, but like, [00:48:00] uh, or the developer might do it themselves, but the feedback from like a user test or something else, I find incredibly influential.

[00:48:06] So, uh, I’d love to see more of that. As a way, and if we can publish it and show, um, do that in public, I think it’s actually could teach a lot of people design skills, even though they might not identify as a designer. Agree. Cool. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:48:24] All right. We might actually get through these by by the time they kick us out. So I dunno if the lights are gonna go off or my mic cut out. I don’t know. We’ll see. . Hi, my name is Cassandra. This is my first word

[00:48:34] camp. Welcome.

[00:48:39] You picked a good one. yes. I only understand about half of the development conversation, but that’s all right. Um, so. I actually come from the nonprofit world mm-hmm and I have had the privilege to learn from presenters here about some of the efforts around, um, diversity, equity and inclusion mm-hmm . But I wanted to hear your thoughts about how our community, everyone, right?

[00:49:03] Not just the community team mm-hmm , um, could actively and strategically create avenues for disadvantaged communities. I’ve helped build relationships locally between companies and schools, for example. Um, but this community is brilliant. It’s loving it’s. Um, so focused on connecting and I just feel like we need to be intentional about fighting for access in combating poverty.

[00:49:33] Yeah, thank you.

[00:49:38] With the time. I’m definitely only gonna be able to scratch your surfaces, this one. So I apologize in advance, um, for a longer depth. This, if you, if you didn’t see earlier, there was a great talk by, uh, Camie CAOs. Yes, I did. Just came in here somewhere. Uh, so that’s already online on the live stream. I got to catch a bit of it and of course saw David Bassett’s great tweets and everything about it.

[00:49:58] So, um, but I, I think that’s worth a much, uh, more. Because it really, like you said, there’s so many different avenues and places. Uh, it’s try to be more belonging as a. Um, I will also point as well, just briefly to some of the work of the WordPress foundation, uh, the different programs that are being run like workshops and other countries, uh, the due action type things that actually build websites for nonprofit.

[00:50:21] So it’s both teaching people how to do it and helping a nonprofit in a different field have a better online presence, um, as being very high impact. And I know some of the work, um, automatic as a team, uh, that builds websites for folks just for. Basically friends or, or influencers or stuff like that. And we found it being very high impact that, you know, even more than just giving money to an organization, if we were able to help them convert more visitors to the website to be Don.

[00:50:47] That had like a, a big multiplier effect. And so it was one of the big ways that we’ve or one of the giving back that I’ve been most proud of that we’ve been able to do. So think about that as a way as well, to support, not just WordPress people, learning WordPress, but other [00:51:00] nonprofits in the space helping their online presence is, uh, can be very, very powerful.

[00:51:04] And most nonprofit you contact will, if you say, like, can I help with the website? They’ll be like, oh, thank you. . Thank you for the question that that’s brief, but hopefully some pointers to some, some deeper discussion on it. Yeah. Thank you. All right. All right. Bring us home. All right. Um, hi. Christina. And one of the things I love about WordPress, I’ve been working with it since 2008 is the flexibility and the choices people have and the commitment to diversity, accessibility, and inclusion.

[00:51:37] Many of my clients are older and they’ve been using the classic. In classic widgets for a long time. And when you say, just teach them the new Gutenberg, that puts a hardship on older people. Yeah. Who’ve been using it for many years and are very happy with the classic editor. So yeah, I’m here to urge you to keep it around much longer than what you suggested so that the older community.

[00:52:05] Is not put in a hardship that they have to learn something that’s new and technical. So please do consider those

[00:52:13] folks

[00:52:14] that

[00:52:20] I think that represents one of the most difficult things. About products in general, because for example, iOS was at 16 is about to come out. So constantly operating systems, everything we need to update, if we’re gonna be both, not just update versions for security and everything like that, but also to expand our mission of democratizing publishing.

[00:52:39] And so one thing I do worry is that the longer that people stay on the old thing, the bigger the Delta is between where, what they were using before and what they’re gonna have to learn. It’s much, much. If you’re kind of on, if you’re learning the latest thing to keep rolling with that update, then if let’s say they were gonna wait another five years and then try to learn whatever, you know, Gutenberg 48, going from classic editor.

[00:53:06] So I would actually, I will go back and encourage them to make the leap now, um, because that will give them most forward compatibility with where things are going. And I actually believe that you. We were kind of early-ish to this, but if you look at every CMS, now they’re using some form of block editor and other document things are doing it.

[00:53:26] Even Google docs is moving to have some richer blocks. So I think the concepts that you learn, uh, block editing is actually the future of just writing and publishing on the web. And, um, and just how everything’s gonna work, not even just Gutenberg and maybe if they learn Gooden. Uh, as you all know, we are, we are relicensing the mobile version of Gutenberg to be more easily in embedable, even in commercial apps.

[00:53:46] I think Gutenberg blocks actually could wind up becoming like a wider web standard. So it won’t just apply to WordPress, but perhaps even for other applications, I’d love if someday MailChimp or even Squarespace or Wix where to use Gutenberg. Um, and so it becomes more of a [00:54:00] cross CMS standard. I think Gutenberg could actually be bigger than WordPress itself in terms of, you know, being, uh, usable for lots of D.

[00:54:07] We already have Tumblr actually Guttenberg is still changing. So if you could make the transition longer, that would help cuz it’s hard for them to learn and now it’s changed and they gotta learn it again. So I I’m, I’m eager to teach them, but I’d rather wait. And so if you could make the transition longer, that would be great.

[00:54:25] Well, we’ve already extended it a few years. Um, so, but Gutenberg started in what? 2016. So it’s been a while already. And, and when classic editor was our main editor, it would change a lot, every single release as well. So there is, I, I know it’s a, I know it’s hard to learn new things, but I can’t recommend anything else in, in good faith.

[00:54:46] Um, so it’s, it’s, I think it’s, uh, Hard but worth it. Well, just consider the hardship on them. That’s all we do. Yeah. Thank you. And we are now over time a little bit, so thank you all for

[00:55:01] coming.

[00:55:07] Oh, I do have. One more thing, uh, to announce which we like to do at the end of would, y’all like to know where work camp us is gonna be next year. Yes. . So one announcement, um, the winner of the team that’s gonna organize for next year, where we’ll be, it’s actually a place I’ve never heard of yet, which is national Harbor, Maryland.

[00:55:28] Has anyone been there? So it’s, uh, it’s near the DC Washington DC Metro area. And from August 21st to August 25th, um, we’re gonna be at national Harbor, Maryland. So I’m looking forward to learning that you might notice that’s a longer work camp and that’s cuz work camp us 2023. We’ll actually begin with a community summit first.

[00:55:47] So

[00:55:49] mm-hmm

[00:55:53] That is all we have for. So see you at the party, see you to contributor day tomorrow, and thank you so much.