On the podcast today we have Ryan Welcher. He's a developer advocate sponsored by Automattic. He has been developing with WordPress since 2009 and before becoming a developer advocate, worked for agencies large and small and as a freelancer. If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, you’ll have come across the new paradigm for content creation, blocks. Every part of your website can now be created and amended as a block. Pages, posts, text, images, headers, footers, navigation and m...
Apr 26, 2023•40 min
On the podcast today we have Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs. They've both been very busy in the WordPress space, and what brings them together is that they’re both founders of a SaaS app called Engine Awesome, where Steve is the CEO and Timothy is the CTO. What has this got to do with WordPress, you might ask. Well, they’re here today to talk about Gutenberg, but not how you might expect. It’s Gutenberg outside of WordPress, but Gutenberg nonetheless. Gutenberg is open source. You are free to d...
Apr 19, 2023•49 min
On the podcast today, we have Nathan Ingram. Nathan is the host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and business development topics via live webinar. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, he has been working with clients to build websites since 1995. He’s also the creator of MonsterContracts, which helps WordPress professionals create contracts for their client work, and it's contracts which are the focus of the podcast today. If you’ve worked directly with clients, then you’ll know that thin...
Apr 12, 2023•42 min
On the podcast today we have Steve Persch and Brian Perry. They’re both employed at Pantheon, an enterprise website operations platform, and they’re here to talk about the evolution of website hosting. Back when the internet started, hosting was a fairly straightforward enterprise. You created HTML files and uploaded them to a server. That was it. An HTML file was a page. Things have changed a lot. We’ve got CDNs, headless, React, Gatsby, Node.js and much more. Is it even possible for the non-te...
Apr 05, 2023•49 min
On the podcast today we have Joost De Valk. If you’ve been in the WordPress space for any length of time, it’s likely that you’ve come across the Yoast SEO plugin. This was the brainchild of the guest today, Joost, same pronunciation, different spelling. We talk about how Joost found WordPress and quickly started working on his SEO plugin. How it rapidly grew and became his career. We discuss the WordPress landscape during this time and whether it’s more difficult now to have the type of success...
Mar 29, 2023•36 min
On the podcast today we have Chris Reynolds. Chris has been working with WordPress for over 15 years, and is now at Pantheon as a CMS Ecosystem engineer, and WordPress technical lead. He’s spoken at WordCamps and at OpenWest about all aspects of WordPress. He's here to talk about Composer and what it can do to assist you with your WordPress website workflow. I suspect that many of the people listening to this podcast are not using Composer, and to Chris, this is something that you should think a...
Mar 22, 2023•43 min
On the podcast today we have Talisha Lewallen. You might have found your way into WordPress intentionally, or perhaps you stumbled across it and decided to explore further. Whichever it was, you've learned things along the way. Perhaps you’re a coder, or a designer. In fact, there are dozens of different pathways in the WordPress ecosystem. Given the broad range of knowledge you might possess, how can you prove that you know what you know? With WordPress being such a dominant force in the world ...
Mar 15, 2023•42 min
On the podcast today, we have Sé Reed and Courtney Robertson, and they’re here to talk about the WP Community Collective, or WPCC for short. The WPCC is a non-profit that is hoping to fund contributors to the WordPress project. WordPress is built on top of a dedicated base of volunteers. People give up their time and expertise to contribute towards the project, and in this way make it free to download and use. But we all have to earn money at some point. Most are not in a position to donate thei...
Mar 08, 2023•48 min
On the podcast today, we have Bob Dunn. If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, and you’ve been consuming content in the ecosystem, it’s highly likely that you’ve come across Bob before. He’s been using WordPress since 2006, WooCommerce since 2011, and has been podcasting since 2014. In another life before he discovered WordPress, Bob ran a marketing company, but now his endeavours are all about WordPress. We talk about how Bob found WordPress back in the day when he was creating ...
Mar 01, 2023•41 min
On the podcast today, we have Patrick Posner. Patrick is a solopreneur and has been developing with WordPress since 2010. He’s worked in many environments, as a freelancer, a senior developer in a WordPress product company, and since 2020 he’s been working full time on his own projects. One of his projects is a plugin called Simply Static. Its purpose is to make a static version of your website. This, of course, begs the question, what is a static site? We explore the idea of 'flattening' your w...
Feb 22, 2023•50 min
On the podcast today we have Paul Halfpenny. Paul is the CTO at Filter, a remote-first digital agency that specialises in open-source tech, as well as a WordCamp speaker. He has an interest in making websites a more personal experience. Website personalisation is the idea of amending content served by your website to match the conditions of your current users. It might be that you want to show (or hide) content to people during certain times of the year. Perhaps it would be helpful to translate ...
Feb 15, 2023•41 min
On the podcast today, we have Naoko Takano. A few days from now, from the 17th to the 19th February 2023, to be precise, the first in-person WordCamp Asia will take place in Bangkok, Thailand. If you follow WordPress events closely, then I’m sure that you’ve seen the excitement mounting. Naoko is on the podcast today to talk about this important event; how it came to be and why it matters. We start off getting some background on Naoko and her personal journey with WordPress. She’s currently spon...
Feb 08, 2023•30 min
On the podcast today we have Robert Rowley. Robert is Patchstack's security advocate, where his time is spent interacting with open source communities to share the word about security best practices. Given his background, the podcast today is all about internet security. We start off with a topic which is very much in the news at the moment, the LastPass security breach. LastPass is a password manager. It will lock up your passwords, and any other data for that matter, in a secure vault, which c...
Feb 01, 2023•55 min
On the podcast today we have Mike Demo, Tracy Apps and david wolfpaw. Unusually, it’s less of an interview and more of a roundtable discussion about their experiences in the WordPress community. A few weeks ago, I put out a call for anyone who might be interested in coming on the podcast. Mike Demo reached out to me and said that it would be good to discuss how the WordPress community deals with LGBTQ matters. We start things off with each of the guests introducing themselves and telling us how ...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 1 min
On the podcast today we have Corey Maass. Corey is a full-stack web developer who works with agencies and businesses, large and small. He specialises in advanced WordPress functionality and building products for, and using, WordPress. Over the last decade or so, SaaS apps have become more and more popular. Not only are we using our computers more, but with the rise of smartphones, we’re connected to our services all the time. There does not appear to be any corner of life where online platforms ...
Jan 18, 2023•43 min
On the podcast today, we have Lax Mariappan. Lax is a web developer based in the Philippines. He’s an Open Source enthusiast, and lover of all things WordPress, and has been tinkering with websites since high school, but it all changed when he discovered WordPress in 2010. Lax currently works as a Backend Engineer at WebDevStudios. We talk today about Headless WordPress, and it’s a complex topic. Headless is the concept of decoupling the WordPress admin from the frontend of the site. WordPress w...
Jan 11, 2023•50 min
On the podcast today, we have Damon Cook. He’s a longtime user of WordPress, trying it first in around 2008. He’s worked for some of the largest WordPress agencies over the years, but his current role is that of Developer Advocate with WP Engine, where he engages with the WordPress community, trying to figure out where WordPress is headed. Damon is on the podcast to talk about styling WordPress, and how it’s changing. Block-based themes are revolutionising website styling. You’re going to be abl...
Jan 04, 2023•43 min
On the podcast today we have Chris Badgett. Chris is behind LifterLMS, which is a learning management system built as a WordPress plugin. He’s been in the WordPress space since 2008, and has moved his agency away from general website building to concentrating upon e-learning membership sites, course creation and marketing automation. He’s on the podcast today to talk about how WordPress and e-learning are a good fit. Although there’s a flourishing SaaS side to e-learning, Chris is convinced that...
Dec 21, 2022•46 min
On the podcast today, we have Dennis Dormon. Dennis is the founder of MainWP. A WordPress plugin which enables you to manage multiple WordPress websites from a single dashboard. As you'll hear, the business has changed over the years, as Dennis has learned more about the plugins' target audience. Dennis talks today about how, in the recent past, he's been trying out working with partners as an effective way to increase the plugins reach. As you'll hear, it's a strategy that he's enamored with, g...
Dec 14, 2022•37 min
On the podcast today we have Steve Burge. He leads the team at PublishPress, which is a plugin company focusing on improving the publishing experience for WordPress users. The topic of today's podcast is very much in his wheelhouse. If you’ve been following recent developments, then you’ll know that we’re currently in the site editing phase. When that’s done, it will be time to turn our collective attention to multi-author collaboration. But what is that and what does it mean? Steve talks today ...
Dec 07, 2022•38 min
On the podcast today we have Matt Medeiros. Matt is the driving force behind many WordPress initiatives. That could be the creation of plugins, WordPress news media, as well as podcasts about all manner of WordPress specific subjects. He likes to juggle multiple projects at once. Currently he’s the Director of Podcaster Success at Castos, which is a podcast hosting company with a WordPress plugin. He’s on the podcast today to give his take on the past, present and future of WordPress. The Matt R...
Nov 30, 2022•48 min
On the podcast today, we have Hannah Smith. Hannah is the Operations and Training Manager for the Green Web Foundation and founder of the Let’s Green The Web campaign. It’s pretty easy to forget that the device that you’re reading this post on is consuming power. We plug things in or charge them up, and they just work. They are sleek and sterile. No pollution comes out of the device directly. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that many of us never make the connection between our use of technology...
Nov 23, 2022•43 min
On the podcast today we have Adam Lowe. He’s here to talk about a new website building plugin from Pinegrow. Adam does not represent the company, but is an avid user of their products, and experienced in how they work. The ‘Pinegrow Web Editor’ is a desktop tool that lets you build websites with a GUI. The closest comparison would be a page builder, but this is not entirely accurate. Unlike most page builders, which require very little technical expertise, Pinegrow does require an understanding ...
Nov 16, 2022•42 min
On the podcast today we have Fränk Klein. Fränk is a self-taught developer. He started out learning PHP in 2011 and from there found his way to WordPress. Over the years he’s worked for Automattic at WordPress.com and WordPress VIP, and is now a principal developer at Human Made, an enterprise WordPress agency. We talk about how Fränk decided early on that he was going to start developing with blocks and, more recently, with the full site editing capabilities now built into WordPress Core. Fränk...
Nov 09, 2022•47 min
On the podcast today we have Matt Cromwell. Matt is Senior Director of Operations and Marketing at StellarWP, and also one of the founders of GiveWP, a donations plugin which uses the freemium model. He's on the podcast today to talk about whether the WordPress.org plugin repository is still an effective place to host your free plugin. Over the past few weeks, the repository has been in the news for the unexpected removal of stats which many plugin developers said they relied upon. The podcast f...
Nov 03, 2022•39 min
On the podcast today we have Christina Deemer. Christina is a senior UX developer at Lede, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a presentation called "embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities". And it's this talk which is the foundation of the podcast today. First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually me...
Oct 26, 2022•38 min
On the podcast today we have Adam Silverstein. Adam is a WordPress core comitter where he works to fix bugs and improve modern web capabilities. As a Developer Relations Engineer in the content ecosystem team at Google, he works to invigorate the open web by empowering and educating developers. At the recent WordCamp US, he gave a presentation entitled ‘Images on the Web - past present and future’. In it, he outlined his thoughts on where the web is going in terms of support for different image ...
Oct 19, 2022•40 min
On the podcast today we have Nick Diego. Nick is a Developer Advocate at WP Engine. He can be found creating educational content, building plugins and themes, and contributing to WordPress Core. He’s on the podcast to talk about his passion and optimism for the future of WordPress using blocks. At the recent WordCamp US, Nick gave a presentation entitled, ‘Let’s Build a Custom Block in 15 Minutes’. It was his attempt to show a group of WordPress enthusiasts that the barrier to creating blocks is...
Oct 12, 2022•32 min
On the podcast today we have Alex Ball. Alex is a Lead Software Engineer at Mindgrub, a digital agency in Baltimore, Maryland. His website leadership experience continues to inform his decision-making today, especially for training clients and making the block editor as easy to use as possible, and that, in essence, is the subject of the podcast today. During WordCamp US 2022, Alex gave a lightning talk in which he laid out some suggestions on how the block editor can be made more straightforwar...
Oct 05, 2022•37 min
On the podcast today we have Joe Dolson. Joe is a WordPress plugin developer, a core committer, and a web accessibility consultant. He’s part of the Make WordPress Accessible team, the team dedicated to improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. His recent presentation at WordCamp US entitled ‘Finding and Fixing the Six Most Common WCAG 2 Failures’, highlights some of the key areas where websites are not as accessible as they should be. The areas we discuss are, low contrast text, missi...
Sep 28, 2022•50 min
